This article on the financial crisis by Simon Johnson is unmissable. If the United States were not the United States, and the dollar wasn’t the dollar, American bankers would have to face up to reality the way emerging market bankers have had to many times before.
As Johnson, the IMF’s former chief economist, explains:
“The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF hands would say: nationalize troubled banks and break them up as necessary.”
