The policy responses in the west have been very different from in Japan. For a start Europe only started doing anything like QE this year, and only in a very limited fashion compared to the US or Britain.<p>If you look at the US and Britain, they did carry out extensive money printing operations in the form of QE, but they also let their economy take the hit hard and early in the form of bankruptcies, job losses and housing devaluation. As a result, their economies have largely been through the pain. The US economy particularly has bounced back and it actually doing pretty well in global terms with growth of 3.7%. That&#x27;s hardly &#x27;the same results&#x27; as in Japan.<p>So Europe followed a completely different path and is still stuck with low growth, while America and Britain did use QE but avoided falling back into recession. It&#x27;s not as if everything&#x27;s come up roses in the West, we still have major challenges to deal with, but how things have panned out is completely different.