Do as we say, not as we do?

In this past Sunday’s Global Public Square program with Fareed Zakaria (a highly recommended program – airs each Sunday on CNN at 1 pm and 6 pm ET. See further information at http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/fareed.zakaria.gps/) Fareed mentioned that in the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the US government, the World Bank and the IMF strongly urged Asian nations to do just the opposite of what Congress and the Presidents (both Bush and Obama) have been pushing. The exact transcript was:

ZAKARIA: Prime Minister Han [of South Korea], let me ask you your lessons, because I'm struck by a certain irony. During the East Asian crisis, American policymakers, people from the IMF, went to East Asia. And as I recall, they had three pieces of advice.

They said, you must not prop up your bad banks -- because you also had a banking crisis -- you must keep interest rates high, and you must not spend a lot of money, because that will bust the budget.

And when confronting our own crisis, the Western world, we have decided to bail out the banks, lower interest rates to zero and spend vast amounts of money.

Were we wrong then, or are we wrong now?

Interesting. We advise other nations in financial crisis to shape up and take hard medicine, but when we ourselves get ill we try the least painful (and perhaps least effective) approach.