So, suggest the radicals, toxic assets should have been left with the shareholders and uninsured creditors of the old bank, who would also gain a claim on a clean new bank.
It is hard to be sure, because radical swings in asset prices over the past few years have muddled up the inflation numbers.
She looked like Johnny Cash but bigger, tougher, sitting in a leather jacket at the back of a bookstore in Seattle, where she has lived since she pulled into town in her van in 1980, fed up with driving, non-monogamy, communal assets, radical feminism, and the name Heather.
More recently, Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve has undertaken £1.4tn-worth of QE, in two bouts, to try to limit the US recession – though the Fed has taken a more radical approach, buying up assets such as mortgage-backed securities and corporate bonds in what Bernanke also called "credit easing".
Benetton's new four-year plan does not call for any asset sales or radical change in strategy; instead, it focuses on trying to restore luster to the Benetton brand name, which in the 1980's epitomized Italian style and quality.
The effort to sell the foreign assets is a radical departure from the previous strategy of WorldCom, the United States' second-largest long- distance company, after AT&T, to strengthen its international businesses.
Japan is now at the beginning of a new era of "fully fledged M&A", he says, which will go beyond mere asset-shuffling to more radical restructuring.
"A radical shift," in the value of assets like stock portfolios or real estate, he said, can wreak havoc with divorce negotiations, which can last months or longer.
By propping up Greek banks and the Greek state, the ECB has taken on €190bn worth of Greek assets, which would face radical write-downs should Greece default.
To maintain the dominance they've enjoyed up to this point, however, banks need a radical redesign of their customer-facing assets.
