When financial bubbles burst, governments and central banks routinely resort to the same playbook. Printing money, slashing interest rates, and accumulating debt. For decades, Japan has exemplified the structural limits of this approach. Through perpetual rounds of quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus, Japan’s public debt has surged to world-record levels. Yet, instead of healthy and self-sustaining growth, it created an economy addicted to continuous intervention and artificially inflated asset prices. The more aggressively monetary authorities attempted to stimulate economic activity, the less responsive the real economy became. Preventing the natural decline of prices and the clearing of markets merely delayed inevitable adjustments, cementing long-term stagnation. Any attempt to permanently resolve deep structural flaws through additional debt inevitably collides with reality. Sustainable progress is never generated through monetary expansion, but through genuine productivity and added value.