Originally Posted by Snake Doctor

Their problem mainly was that they cut spending in other areas in order to fund the stimulus bills, so the net effect on the economy was close to zero.

Japan waited 17 months to cut interest rates, and it wasn't until 5 years in that they got them below 0.5%.

Plus, they didn't have "mark to market" accounting, so the banks never wrote down the massive real estate losses in a timely manner....they kept those loans on the books at full value for way too long and that's one of the reasons their credit market took so long to recover.