The way to eliminate hypocrisy would be to bite the bullet and practice what you preached, not to hop in a time machine and tell South Korea circa 1997 to go do something different.

Oh, but that is exactly what Stiglitz is trying to convey yet seems unheard… Amazing(?) that demonstrably failed policies have such durability.

Then, the mantra was that Japan’s Ministry of Finance had to break up the “convoy” system, force the banks to work out or liquidate their bad debts and let the market pick the winners and losers — as quickly as possible.

Now, what are Paulson and company trying to do? Organize a convoy.

I think what often amazes the rest of the world isn’t the level of hypocrisy in American culture and policy, but the fact that so many Americans are so stunningly blind to it.

Agreed that Stiglitz has not parsed out the elements of his critique as well as he could have. His big beef with the Asia crisis medicine was the not-salutary opening of financial markets and the interest rate shock. His argument about transparency (and presumably about corruption too) is that we don’t walk our talk, and it is more evident with every passing day.

Agreed also that the discussion above isn’t news to the well informed within the US, and a larger swathe outside the US. But as you point out, the press here is pretty craven.

But having said that, there is a large amount of commentary lasering on Treasury’s and the Fed’s complicity in depreciating the dollar to help Wall Street ease all its bad debt off its constipated books.

I think there are very few astute finance-news consumers who are really in the dark about what is going on. The federal interventions on Wall St.’s behalf have been too frequent and high-profile to ignore.

American media are now slaveringly obsequious to Goldman, because Goldman is the firm that has “won.” So the NYT and others are talking up Blankfein’s genius, while making no mention whatsoever of the billions Goldman’s HFs blew through, or questions surrounding who got what Fed repos in August, or insinuating anything negative about ex-Goldman CEO Hank Paulson.