In the summer of 1997, a tidal wave of economic problems swept across Asia. Currencies plummeted, banks failed, GNP stagnated, unemployment soared, and exports stalled. In short, the vaunted "Asian Economic Miracle" became the "Asian Economic Crisis"—with serious repercussions for nations and markets around the world. While the headlines are still fresh, a group of experts on the region presents the first account to focus on the political causes and implications of the crisis. The events of 1997–98 involved not just property values, financial flows, portfolio makeup, and debt ratios, they argue, but also the power relationships that shaped those economic indicators.As they examine the domestic, regional, and international politics that underlay the economic collapse, the authors analyze the reasons why the crisis affected the nations of Asia in radically different ways. The authors also consider whether the crisis indicates a radical change in Asia's economic future.

This book analyzes the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1999. In addition to the issues of financial system restructuring, export-led recovery, crony capitalism, and competitiveness in Asian manufacturing, it examines six key Asian economies--China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. The book makes clear that there is little particularly Asian about the Asian financial crisis. The generic character of the crisis became clear during 1998, when it reached Russia, South Africa, and Brazil. The spread of the crisis reflects the rapid arrival of global capitalism in a world economy not used to the integration of the advanced and developing countries. The book makes recommendations for reform, including the formation of regional monetary bodies, the establishment of an international bankruptcy system, the democratization of international organizations, the infusion of public money to revive the financial and corporate sectors in Pacific Asia, and stronger supervision over financial institutions. The book emphasizes a mismatch in Pacific Asia between investment in physical hardware (e.g., factories and machinery) and in social software (e.g., scientific research centers and administrative and judiciary systems). In a world of growing international competitiveness, concerns over governance will weigh increasingly heavily on unreformed Asian countries. The long-term competitiveness of Asia rests on its getting its institutions right.

This study not only examines the countries most severely affected by the Asian financial crisis, but also draws lessons from those whose economies escaped the worst problems. The author focuses on the political economy of the crisis, emphasizing long-standing problems and crisis management tactics.

The financial crisis that swept across East Asia during 1997-1998 was devastating not only in its economic impact but also in its social and political effects. The explosive growth and sociopolitical modernization that had powered the region for much of the preceding decade suddenly were dramatically interrupted. East Asia is economically outperforming the rest of the developing world once again and has become a leading force in the global economy. In the wake of the crisis, East Asia changed in important ways. Crisis as Catalyst contains assessments of these changes-both ephemeral and permanent- by a wide range of specialists in Asian economics and politics. The crisis, as the contributors to this volume show, catalyzed changes across political, corporate, and social arenas both in the countries hit hard by the crisis and in others throughout the region. The authors of Crisis as Catalyst examine what has changed (as well as what has not changed) in East Asia since the crisis, explain these variations, and reflect on the long-term significance of these developments.

This is a unique insider account of the new world of unfettered finance. The author, an Asian regulator, examines how old mindsets, market fundamentalism, loose monetary policy, carry trade, lax supervision, greed, cronyism, and financial engineering caused both the Asian crisis of the late 1990s and the current global crisis of 2008-2009. This book shows how the Japanese zero interest rate policy to fight deflation helped create the carry trade that generated bubbles in Asia whose effects brought Asian economies down. The study's main purpose is to demonstrate that global finance is so interlinked and interactive that our current tools and institutional structure to deal with critical episodes are completely outdated. The book explains how current financial policies and regulation failed to deal with a global bubble and makes recommendations on what must change.

The turmoil that has rocked Asian markets since the middle of 1997, and that is now having such deep effects on the economies in the region, is the third major currency crisis of the 1990s. This study explains how the Asian crisis arose and spread. It then outlines the corrective policy measures that could help end the crisis, and the shortcomings that have been revealed in the international financial system that require reform to reduce the chances of a recurrence.

Why do some authoritarian regimes topple during financial crises, while others steer through financial crises relatively unscathed? In this book, Thomas B. Pepinsky uses the experiences of Indonesia and Malaysia and the analytical tools of open economy macroeconomics to answer this question. Focusing on the economic interests of authoritarian regimes' supporters, Pepinsky shows that differences in cross-border asset specificity produce dramatically different outcomes in regimes facing financial crises. When asset specificity divides supporters, as in Indonesia, they desire mutually incompatible adjustment policies, yielding incoherent adjustment policy followed by regime collapse. When coalitions are not divided by asset specificity, as in Malaysia, regimes adopt radical adjustment measures that enable them to survive financial crises. Combining rich qualitative evidence from Southeast Asia with cross-national time-series data and comparative case studies of Latin American autocracies, Pepinsky reveals the power of coalitions and capital mobility to explain how financial crises produce regime change.

In the late 1990s, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia experienced a series of major financial crises evinced by widespread bank insolvencies and currency depreciations, as well as sharp declines in gross domestic production. This sudden disruption of the Asian economic `miracle' astounded many observers around the world, raised questions about the stability of the international financial system and caused widespread fear that this financial crisis would spread to other countries. What has been called the Asian crisis followed a prolonged slump in Japan dating from the early 1980s and came after the Mexican currency crisis in the mid-1990s. Thus, the Asian crisis became a major policy concern at the International Monetary Fund as well as among developed countries whose cooperation in dealing with such financial crises is necessary to maintain the stability and efficiency of global financial markets. This book collects the papers and discussions delivered at an October 1998 Conference co-sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the International Monetary Fund to examine the causes, implications and possible solutions to the crises. The conference participants included a broad range of academic, industry, and regulatory experts representing more than thirty countries. Topics discussed included the origin of the individual crises; early warning indicators; the role played by the global financial sector in this crisis; how, given an international safety net, potential risks of moral hazard might contribute to further crises; the lessons for the international financial system to be drawn from the Asian crisis; and what the role of the International Monetary Fund might be in future rescue operations. Because the discussions of these topics include a wide diversity of critical views and opinions, the book offers a particularly rich presentation of current and evolving thinking on the causes and preventions of international banking and monetary crises. The book promises to be one of the timeliest as well as one of the most complete treatments of the Asian financial crisis and its implications for future policymaking.

In the space of a few months, across Asia, a miracle became a nightmare. This was the Asian Financial Crisis of 1995–98. In this economic crisis hundreds of people died in rioting, political strong men were removed and hundreds of billions of dollars were lost by investors. This crisis saw the US dollar value of some Asian stock markets decline by ninety percent. Why did almost no one see it coming? The Asian Financial Crisis 1995–98 charts Russell Napier’s personal journey during that crisis as he wrote daily for institutional investors about an increasingly uncertain future. Relying on contemporaneous commentary, it charts the mistakes and successes of investors in the battle for investment survival in Asia from 1995–98. This is not just a guide for investors navigating financial markets, but also an explanation of how this crisis created the foundations of an age of debt that has changed the modern world.

An examination of the political and economic causes and consequences of the Asian financial crises.