Home - Index - News - Krisen 1992 - EMU - Cataclysm - Wall Street Bubbles


The lessons of the Asian financial crisis could fill several books, and indeed they have.
For a scholarly example, see Morris Goldstein (1998), The Asian Financial Crisis: Causes, Cures, and Systemic Implications, Institute for International Economics.
For a general audience example, see Paul Blustein (2001), The Chastening, Public Affairs.
Paul McCulley and Ramin Toloui November 2007


Wrong lessons from Asia’s crisis
Chris Giles, FT July 2 2007

Few in 1997 were surprised that Thailand’s economy was suffering. With extremely large current account deficits of around 8 per cent of gross domestic product, a vulnerability to speculative attack had been noticed by the IMF, which had recommended a more flexible exchange rate.

Thailand refused. Instead, speculators battled with the central bank through the spring of 1997 over the value of the baht. When the authorities ran out of foreign exchange reserves, they admitted defeat and allowed the currency to plunge on July 2, inflicting great pain on banks and finance companies, which had borrowed in dollars in the belief that the currency would remain pegged.

Full text


Thailands riksbankschef avgår efter valutakollaps, enligt BBC.

Det gjorde inte Feldt (han är fortfarande ordförande i Riksbanksfullmäktige, Erik Åsbrink eller Bengt Dennis (han gick i pension avtackad med blommor och till ett nytt jobb som rådgivare åt S-E-Banken, där han jobbar ihop med Klas Eklund, tidigare rådgivare åt Palme, Feldt och Åsbrink.


Internationella valutafondens roll i krishantering: fallet Asien
EVA SREJBER, MARTIN CARLENS & MARIA GÖTHERSTRÖM - Ekonomisk Debatt nr 2/1999

För oss från Norden var det dock uppenbart redan i ett relativt tidigt skede av krisen i Asien att det fanns flera likheter med den bank- och finanskris vi upplevt i Sverige, liksom i Finland och Norge.
Låt oss här nämna tre punkter där vi anser att likheterna är de mest uppenbara.


A world divided, Martin Wolf, FT, July 14, 1999
The biggest challenge for human development is to help failing states, particularly in Africa


Steve Hanke in Forbes:
But Jubilee 2000, a London-based organization supported by the usual luminous do-gooders - politicians, churchmen, academics, writers, sports figures and entertainers - wants much more. It wants governments and multinational organizations to write off all loans they have made to the poorest countries.


Hedge funds, leverage, and the lessons of Long-Term Capital Management
Federal Reserve Board Testimony of Patrick M. Parkinson Associate Director, Division of Research and Statistics
Before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives May 6, 1999


Did they save the world?

Steve Hanke thinks not

-

The Dangerous Preference for Fixed Exchange Rates,
by John H. Makin March 1999

Jeffrey Sachs on Brazil, january 1999

On the Need for an International Lender of Last Resort, Stanley Fischer january 1999


IMF Asian Crisis

Crisis in Emerging Market Economies: the Road to Recovery
Address by Michel Camdessus Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
September 15, 1998

Economic Crises and the Financial Sector, Stanley Fischer, First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, September 10, 1998


Institute for International Economics

Paul Krugman on Japan, May 1998: "Japans trap"

John H. Makin, American Enterprise Institute:
Asia's Crisis Is Not a Currency Crisis,

John H. Makin: Interference with Free Markets Causes Global Crisis
October 1998, John H. Makin is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute

South China Morning Post (HK) om Asienkrisen

Washington Post: Asian crisis


Joseph Stiglitz, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist The World Bank
- Road to Recovery Restoring growth in the region could be a long and difficult process

Rolf Englund i VI-direkt 98-03: "Asiens skuldkris hot mot världsekonomin"


President Clinton 1998-10-06 - (stupid remarks)

Gerald Corrigan, Managing Director, Goldman, Sachs & Co. (pdf file)


Varning för asiatisk skleros! - Tomas Larsson

Asiens kris är inte kapitalismens - Tomas Larsson

Singapore - en ny välfärdsmodell? av Tomas Larsson

DN-ledare 98-06-21, Den gemensamma nämnaren för de sydostasiatiska ekonomierna är överbelåning. Generös lånefinansiering är en faktor bakom expansionen. I Indonesien och Sydkorea har statliga respektive statligt gynnade företag kunnat arbeta med extremt hög skuldsättning och extremt låg lönsamhet. Men detta innebär inte att krisen är en följd av "nyliberalism" som Göran Persson påstått. Sydostasiens ekonomier har på kort tid lyft huvuddelen av befolkningen ur fattigdom genom företagande, arbete, högt sparande och investerande, och frihandel.


Utdrag ur ledare i Euromoney June 1998

To break the vicious circle of bankruptcy and credit crunch, Japan needs a national bad bank - a US-style Resolution Trust - into which impaired assets are sold at realistic market prices. The banks that cannot absorb the consequent write-offs have to be allowed to fail, though the depositors should be compensated. The banks, much reduced in size, must then start lending again.

The problem is this. Admitting there is a crisis means admitting someone is to blame and then apportioning that blame. In the US, when the scale of the Savings & Loans crisis became clear, the failure of the regulators was acknowledged and changes were made. In Japan those to blame - the central bank, the ministry of finance and others - are unwilling to shoulder responsibility in case they lose power or influence to a competing institution. And government leaders apparently cannot stomach the wholesale firing of these failed bureaucrats.

Under these circumstances, with government leaders unwilling to act decisively and with real social pain increasing, you would expect a popular backlash. The democratic process would be the catalyst for change, either electing a new government on a reform ticket or forcing reform upon the incumbents. In Japan this won't happen either. First, Japan's democracy is too weak to perform this function. Second, and more important, people generally do not march in the streets demanding to be made unemployed. That is what a demand to restructure Japan's banking system (and so the rest of its economy) would effectively be, in the short term at least.


CNN Special about Yen Crisis

Indonesian deal with the banks

Euromoney maj 98 Indonesien

Asia's Continuing Depression By Robert J. Samuelson Wednesday, May 13, 1998 Washington Post

U.S. Assistant Secretary for International Affairs Timothy F. Geithner at the Asian Development Bank


Is the Asian Crisis Over? Address by Michel Camdessus Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund at the National Press Club Washington, D.C. - April 2, 1998



CNN om Asienkrisen

Economist om Asienkrisen

Financial Times om Asienkrisen

South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

The Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University om Asien-krisen

Asian Financial Situation (U.S. Trade Administration)


DN-ledare 98-02- 09: Vi överlever Sydöstasiens kris - IMF har en viktig uppgift i att stödja det internationella banksystemet


Helmut Reisen: Green light for danger TUESDAY FEBRUARY 3 1998

Credit rating agencies need radical reform if they are to do their job properly


Washinton Post: Understanding the Asian Economic Crisis


Economist om krisen i Asien

http://www.economist.com/editorial/justforyou/focus/focus_asian_economies_tframeset.html

Asia and the IMF, Hong Kong, China, September 19, 1997

http://www.imf.org/external/np/apd/asia/asia.htm

Press Conference by Mr. Michel Camdessus, Managing Director of the Intenational Monetary Fund - January 16, 1998

http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/1998/TR980116.HTM

World Bank Announces Visit by its President, James D. Wolfensohn, to East Asia

http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/extme/012798ps.htm


World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn came under sharp criticism today - Feb. 4 - by community leaders and democracy advocates who said the bank's past lending here had ignored rampant government corruption and the lack of democratic development. Wolfensohn replied by acknowledging that "we didn't get everything right in the past."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/asiaecon/asiaecon.htm



Debt Crisis/Skuldkrisen


Home