The financial crisis has afforded an excellent opportunity to witness numerous retreats to ideological preconception; broadly divided between asinine generalities like: “Bush did it!” / “government intervention caused the crisis!” / “corporate stooges are evil!” Being a member of the corporate stoogery school of thought, these events have forced a painful evaluation of deeply held beliefs. Instead of nuance though, perhaps subscription to a new mantra is in order.

Niall Furgeson has an excellent article in Vanity Fair (who knew there was a reason to subscribe to Vanity Fair other than to impress guests with your acute cultural awareness?) One line that’s been appearing over and over again is the crisis’ intimate connection to rapid growth in Asia in the past decade. Even if not the single most important reason, the narrative still dovetails with a Sino-centric world view:

The benefits for the United States were manifold. Asian imports kept down U.S. inflation. Asian labor kept down U.S. wage costs. Above all, Asian savings kept down U.S. interest rates. But there was a catch. The more Asia was willing to lend to the United States, the more Americans were willing to borrow. The Asian savings glut was thus the underlying cause of the surge in bank lending, bond issuance, and new derivative contracts that Planet Finance witnessed after 2000. It was the underlying cause of the hedge-fund population explosion. It was the underlying reason why private-equity partnerships were able to borrow money left, right, and center to finance leveraged buyouts. And it was the underlying reason why the U.S. mortgage market was so awash with cash by 2006 that you could get a 100 percent mortgage with no income, no job, and no assets.