Asset bubble combined with deregulation? Check.

National banking crisis? Check.

Offer of government support? Check.

Acceptance of government support? Not even close.

Is this the United States in 2008 or Japan in the early 1990s? It's so hard to tell.

After more than four hours of testimony by U.S. financial regulators on Capitol Hill Tuesday, it's looking less and less likely that Washington is going to agree on anything resembling the $700 billion bailout plan presented by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson by the time they leave the office on Friday.

Republicans are appalled at the administration's willingness to abandon its free-market ideals, and Democrats are demanding a host of stipulations to be included in the legislation. Everyone seems to recognize that something needs to be done, but the group, typically, seems incapable of actually getting anything done.

If the Congress recesses as planned next week without a bailout plan, what's next? For a glimpse, revisit the history books on Japan's economy.

Just a decade ago, the second-biggest economy was facing a similar crisis. In the early 1990s, Japan's banking system collapsed after the post-war asset bubble burst. The government offered to step in, but the taxpaying public would have none of it.

It would be at least five years later, after the Japanese economy went into a tailspin as the banks ceased lending to individuals and institutions, that the government finally intervened. Indeed, it wasn't until the average Japanese citizen was truly suffering during the Asian crisis of 1997 that the government stepped in to bail out the country's banks.

The problems facing the credit-crunched banks and the U.S. taxpayers today are similar. Many Americans aren't feeling the impact of the crisis on Wall Street yet. While they've endured falling home prices and in many cases foreclosure, Americans have not seen what happens when their lifeline—credit—becomes frozen.

No one wants to imagine that ugly economic picture, either. That's why comments from Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke in recent days convey a sense of desperation that's rarely shared among Washington's fiscal leaders.

Meanwhile, on Wall Street, guess who is stepping in to save the day this week? Japanese banks. The Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group agreed to acquire a 20 percent stake in Morgan Stanley, while Nomura Holdings is scooping up much of the global assets of bankrupt Lehman Brothers.

Are they brilliant, or also suffering from lack of short-term memory?