Economists see America's problems as much narrower than those of Asia in 1997-1998, limited to accounting and auditing irregularities.
The ADB's Madhur said Asia's problems five years ago involved bad loans and lending to favoured clients, lack of independent corporate boards and no protection for the rights of creditors and minority shareholders.
"The corporate governance issue was a much larger agenda than just a matter of transparency or information disclosure," he said.
There remained one other difference between the US and Asia with American companies going public with misleading or false information to hide losses, while in Asia the problem was mainly the lack of disclosure.
"For Asia, it seemed they were errors of omission. For the US, they seemed to be errors of commission," one Asian banker said.
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