They rather failed to prevent it, or rather to soften it outcome, but on the other hand it is hard to say here about failure, because there was really nothing anyone in the world could do. As we, as speculators, or investors, take risk in order to gain something, so are doing countries, by developing themselves. It is not coincidence that the most developed countries (UK, USA and Japan) are now having the biggest debt, that is the price for years of investment and development, which made them economic leaders of the world. The topic of economic growth is itself very interesting topic, I recommend some works of Robert J. Barro, for example less serious as for him but extremely interesting: (http://www.nber.org/~rosenbla/econ302/lecture/barroreligion.pdf)
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