The governor of the Bank of Japan, Masaaki Shirakawa, said in a speech last week that the world outside Japan still has a lot to learn from his country's experience of a bubble bursting and ensuing financial crisis.

In a wide-ranging speech given to the National Press Club in Tokyo last week, Shirakawa said that though it "may seem unbelievable in hindsight, the overwhelming prevailing view overseas, before the collapse of the most recent credit bubble… was that aggressive monetary policy could