The other main reason for America's success was the creation of the Resolution Trust Corporation, also in 1989.

ECONOMIST: Japan��s financial crisis

China has adopted the model of America's Resolution Trust Corporation, which took on the loans of bankrupt savings-and-loan companies.

ECONOMIST: Problems left over from history | The

In that auction, the government's Asset Management Company similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation that cleaned up America's savings-and-loan mess will be allowed to bid.

ECONOMIST: Thailand��s asset sale

On April 1st Mr Nakabo becomes head of Japan's version of the Resolution Trust Corporation, the company set up to recover loans made by America's Savings-and-Loans institutions.

ECONOMIST: The enforcer

One option is to set up a version of America's Resolution Trust Corporation, which inherited and sold off the assets of failed savings and loan associations in the early 1990s.

ECONOMIST: And it finally came to tears

America's savings-and-loan fiasco of the 1980s was, after much dithering, eventually contained in less than three years by the government's Resolution Trust Corporation, which was charged with disposing of bust institutions' assets.

ECONOMIST: Japan��s sick banks

For advice, it sought out former regulators from the Resolution Trust Corporation, charged in the 1980s with cleaning up America's savings-and-loan (thrift) crisis, and from Securitas, which handled Sweden's banking crisis in the early 1990s.

ECONOMIST: Lessons in dealing with duff loans

Pressure is likely to grow for the creation of a more formal mechanism for handling the sick, akin to the Resolution Trust Corporation that took on bad assets from the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.

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