East Asian financial crisis - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Asian financial crisis was a period of financial crisis

Financial crisis

The term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these...

that gripped much of Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

beginning in July 1997, and raised fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion

Financial contagion

Financial contagion refers to a scenario in which small shocks, which initially affect only a few financial institutions or a particular region of an economy, spread to the rest of financial sectors and other countries whose economies were previously healthy, in a manner similar to the transmission...

.

The crisis started in Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

with the financial collapse of the Thai baht

Thai baht

The baht is the currency of Thailand. It is subdivided into 100 satang . The issuance of currency is the responsibility of the Bank of Thailand.-History:The baht, like the pound, originated from a traditional unit of mass...

caused by the decision of the Thai government to float the baht, cutting its peg

Fixed exchange rate

A fixed exchange rate, sometimes called a pegged exchange rate, is a type of exchange rate regime wherein a currency's value is matched to the value of another single currency or to a basket of other currencies, or to another measure of value, such as gold.A fixed exchange rate is usually used to...

to the U.S. dollar, after exhaustive efforts to support it in the face of a severe financial overextension that was in part real estate driven. At the time, Thailand had acquired a burden of foreign debt that made the country effectively bankrupt even before the collapse of its currency. As the crisis spread, most of Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

and Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

saw slumping currencies, devalued stock markets and other asset prices, and a precipitous rise in private debt.

Though there has been general agreement on the existence of a crisis and its consequences, what is less clear are the causes of the crisis, as well as its scope and resolution. Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

and Thailand were the countries most affected by the crisis. Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, Malaysia, Laos

Laos

Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...

and the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

were also hurt by the slump. The People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

, Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

, Brunei

Brunei

Brunei , officially the State of Brunei Darussalam or the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace , is a sovereign state located on the north coast of the island of Borneo, in Southeast Asia...

and Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

were less affected, although all suffered from a loss of demand and confidence throughout the region.

Foreign debt-to-GDP ratios rose from 100% to 167% in the four large Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Association of Southeast Asian Nations

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, commonly abbreviated ASEAN rarely ), is a geo-political and economic organization of ten countries located in Southeast Asia, which was formed on 8 August 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Since then, membership has...

economies in 1993–96, then shot up beyond 180% during the worst of the crisis. In South Korea, the ratios rose from 13 to 21% and then as high as 40%, while the other northern newly industrialized countries fared much better. Only in Thailand and South Korea did debt service-to-exports ratios rise.

Although most of the governments of Asia had seemingly sound fiscal policies, the International Monetary Fund

International Monetary Fund

The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...

(IMF) stepped in to initiate a $40 billion program to stabilize the currencies of South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia, economies particularly hard hit by the crisis. The efforts to stem a global economic crisis did little to stabilize the domestic situation in Indonesia, however. After 30 years in power, President

President of Indonesia

The President of the Republic of Indonesia is the head of state and the head of government of the Republic of Indonesia.The first president was Sukarno and the current president is Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.- Sukarno era :...

Suharto was forced to step down on 21 May 1998 in the wake of widespread rioting that followed sharp price increases caused by a drastic devaluation of the rupiah. The effects of the crisis lingered through 1998. In 1998 the Philippines growth dropped to virtually zero. Only Singapore and Taiwan proved relatively insulated from the shock, but both suffered serious hits in passing, the former more so due to its size and geographical location between Malaysia and Indonesia. By 1999, however, analysts saw signs that the economies of Asia

Economy of Asia

The economy of Asia comprises more than 4 billion people living in 46 different states. Six further states lie partly in Asia, but are considered to belong to another region economically and politically...

were beginning to recover.

History

Until 1997, Asia attracted almost half of the total capital

Capital (economics)

In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...

inflow into developing countries. The economies of Southeast Asia in particular maintained high interest rates attractive to foreign investors looking for a high rate of return

Rate of return

In finance, rate of return , also known as return on investment , rate of profit or sometimes just return, is the ratio of money gained or lost on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. The amount of money gained or lost may be referred to as interest, profit/loss, gain/loss, or...

. As a result the region's economies received a large inflow of money and experienced a dramatic run-up in asset prices. At the same time, the regional economies of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and South Korea experienced high growth rates, 8–12% GDP, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This achievement was widely acclaimed by financial institutions including the IMF and World Bank

World Bank

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...

, and was known as part of the "Asian economic miracle".

In 1994, noted economist Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman

Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...

published an article attacking the idea of an "Asian economic miracle". He argued that East Asia

East Asia

East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...

's economic growth had historically been the result of increasing capital investment. However, total factor productivity

Total factor productivity

In economics, total-factor productivity is a variable which accounts for effects in total output not caused by inputs. If all inputs are accounted for, then total factor productivity can be taken as a measure of an economy’s long-term technological change or technological dynamism.If all inputs...

had increased only marginally or not at all. Krugman argued that only growth in total factor productivity, and not capital investment, could lead to long-term prosperity. Krugman's views would be seen by many as prescient after the financial crisis had become apparent, though he himself stated that he had not predicted the crisis nor foreseen its depth.

The causes of the debacle are many and disputed. Thailand's economy developed into a bubble fueled by "hot money". More and more was required as the size of the bubble grew. The same type of situation happened in Malaysia, and Indonesia, which had the added complication of what was called "crony capitalism

Crony capitalism

Crony capitalism is a term describing a capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials...

". The short-term capital flow was expensive and often highly conditioned for quick profit

Profit (economics)

In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total opportunity costs of a venture to an entrepreneur or investor, whilst economic profit In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total...

. Development money went in a largely uncontrolled manner to certain people only, not particularly the best suited or most efficient, but those closest to the centers of power.
Another major factor was that these countries became excessively dependent upon exports for their economy. Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand had seen their exports to GDP ratio grow from average 35% in 1996 to over 55% in 1998. Such huge dependence upon trade made these countries susceptible to currency movements.
At the time of the mid-1990s, Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea had large private current account

Current account

In economics, the current account is one of the two primary components of the balance of payments, the other being the capital account. The current account is the sum of the balance of trade , net factor income and net transfer payments .The current account balance is one of two major...

deficits and the maintenance of fixed exchange rate

Fixed exchange rate

s encouraged external borrowing and led to excessive exposure to foreign exchange risk in both the financial and corporate sectors. In the mid-1990s, two factors began to change their economic environment. As the U.S. economy recovered from a recession in the early 1990s, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank under Alan Greenspan

Alan Greenspan

Alan Greenspan is an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. He currently works as a private advisor and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC...

began to raise U.S. interest rates to head off inflation. This made the U.S. a more attractive investment destination relative to Southeast Asia, which had been attracting hot money flows through high short-term interest rates, and raised the value of the U.S. dollar. For the Southeast Asian nations which had currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar, the higher U.S. dollar caused their own exports to become more expensive and less competitive in the global markets. At the same time, Southeast Asia's export growth slowed dramatically in the spring of 1996, deteriorating their current account position.

Some economists have advanced the growing exports of China as a contributing factor to ASEAN nations' export growth slowdown, though these economists maintain the main cause of the crises was excessive real estate speculation. China had begun to compete effectively with other Asian exporters particularly in the 1990s after the implementation of a number of export-oriented reforms. Other economists dispute China's impact, noting that both ASEAN and China experienced simultaneous rapid export growth in the early 1990s.

Many economists believe that the Asian crisis was created not by market psychology or technology, but by policies that distorted incentives within the lender–borrower relationship. The resulting large quantities of credit

Credit (finance)

Credit is the trust which allows one party to provide resources to another party where that second party does not reimburse the first party immediately , but instead arranges either to repay or return those resources at a later date. The resources provided may be financial Credit is the trust...

that became available generated a highly leveraged

Leverage (finance)

In finance, leverage is a general term for any technique to multiply gains and losses. Common ways to attain leverage are borrowing money, buying fixed assets and using derivatives. Important examples are:* A public corporation may leverage its equity by borrowing money...

economic climate, and pushed up asset prices to an unsustainable level. These asset prices eventually began to collapse, causing individuals and companies to default

Default (finance)

In finance, default occurs when a debtor has not met his or her legal obligations according to the debt contract, e.g. has not made a scheduled payment, or has violated a loan covenant of the debt contract. A default is the failure to pay back a loan. Default may occur if the debtor is either...

on debt obligations. The resulting panic among lenders led to a large withdrawal of credit from the crisis countries, causing a credit crunch

Credit crunch

A credit crunch is a reduction in the general availability of loans or a sudden tightening of the conditions required to obtain a loan from the banks. A credit crunch generally involves a reduction in the availability of credit independent of a rise in official interest rates...

and further bankruptcies. In addition, as foreign investors attempted to withdraw their money, the exchange market

Foreign exchange market

The foreign exchange market is a global, worldwide decentralized financial market for trading currencies. Financial centers around the world function as anchors of trading between a wide range of different types of buyers and sellers around the clock, with the exception of weekends...

was flooded with the currencies of the crisis countries, putting depreciative

Depreciation (currency)

Currency depreciation is the loss of value of a country's currency with respect to one or more foreign reference currencies, typically in a floating exchange rate system. It is most often used for the unofficial increase of the exchange rate due to market forces, though sometimes it appears...

pressure on their exchange rates. To prevent currency values collapsing, these countries' governments raised domestic interest rates to exceedingly high levels (to help diminish flight of capital

Capital flight

Capital flight, in economics, occurs when assets and/or money rapidly flow out of a country, due to an economic event and that disturbs investors and causes them to lower their valuation of the assets in that country, or otherwise to lose confidence in its economic...

by making lending more attractive to investors) and to intervene in the exchange market, buying up any excess domestic currency at the fixed exchange rate

Fixed exchange rate

with foreign reserves. Neither of these policy responses could be sustained for long. Very high interest rates, which can be extremely damaging to an economy that is healthy, wreaked further havoc on economies in an already fragile state, while the central banks were hemorrhaging foreign reserves, of which they had finite amounts. When it became clear that the tide of capital fleeing these countries was not to be stopped, the authorities ceased defending their fixed exchange rates and allowed their currencies to float

Floating exchange rate

A floating exchange rate or fluctuating exchange rate is a type of exchange rate regime wherein a currency's value is allowed to fluctuate according to the foreign exchange market. A currency that uses a floating exchange rate is known as a floating currency....

. The resulting depreciated value of those currencies meant that foreign currency-denominated liabilities grew substantially in domestic currency terms, causing more bankruptcies and further deepening the crisis.

Other economists, including Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist and Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. One of the youngest economics professors in the history of Harvard University, Sachs became known for his role as an adviser to Eastern European and developing country governments in the...

, have downplayed the role of the real economy in the crisis compared to the financial markets. The rapidity with which the crisis happened has prompted Sachs and others to compare it to a classic bank run

Bank run

A bank run occurs when a large number of bank customers withdraw their deposits because they believe the bank is, or might become, insolvent...

prompted by a sudden risk shock. Sachs pointed to strict monetary and contractory fiscal policies implemented by the governments on the advice of the IMF in the wake of the crisis, while Frederic Mishkin

Frederic Mishkin

Frederic Stanley "Rick" Mishkin is an American economist and professor at the Columbia Business School. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 to 2008.-Early life and family:...

points to the role of asymmetric information in the financial markets that led to a "herd mentality

Herd mentality

Herd mentality describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors, follow trends, and/or purchase items. Examples of the herd mentality include stock market trends, fashions in apparel, cars, taste in music, home décor, etc...

" among investors that magnified a small risk in the real economy. The crisis has thus attracted interest from behavioral economists interested in market psychology. Another possible cause of the sudden risk shock may also be attributable to the handover of Hong Kong sovereignty on 1 July 1997

Transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong

The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China, referred to as ‘the Return’ or ‘the Reunification’ by the Chinese and ‘the Handover’ by others, took place on 1 July 1997...

. During the 1990s, hot money flew into the Southeast Asia region but investors were often ignorant of the actual fundamentals or risk profiles of the respective economies. The uncertainty regarding the future of Hong Kong led investors to shrink even further away from Asia, exacerbating economic conditions in the area (subsequently leading to the depreciation of the Thai baht on 2 July 1997).

The foreign ministers of the 10 ASEAN countries believed that the well co-ordinated manipulation of their currencies was a deliberate attempt to destabilize the ASEAN economies. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused George Soros

George Soros

George Soros is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philosopher, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes...

of ruining Malaysia's economy with "massive currency speculation." (Soros claims to have been a buyer of the ringgit during its fall, having sold it short in 1997.) Mahathir's claims were couched in antisemitic terms, and in 2006 he apologized and withdrew the accusations.

At the 30th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting held in Subang Jaya

Subang Jaya

Subang Jaya is a suburban city in the Klang Valley, Selangor, Malaysia. It comprises the southern third of the district of Petaling, and is home to a third of the district population of 1.78 million. Subang Jaya comprises , Bandar Sunway, UEP Subang Jaya, Putra Heights and Batu Tiga...

, Malaysia, the foreign ministers issued a joint declaration on 25 July 1997 expressing serious concern and called for further intensification of ASEAN's cooperation to safeguard and promote ASEAN's interest in this regard. Coincidentally, on that same day, the central bankers of most of the affected countries were at the EMEAP (Executive Meeting of East Asia Pacific) meeting in Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

, and they failed to make the 'New Arrangement to Borrow' operational. A year earlier, the finance ministers of these same countries had attended the 3rd APEC finance ministers meeting in Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

, Japan on 17 March 1996, and according to that joint declaration, they had been unable to double the amounts available under the 'General Agreement to Borrow' and the 'Emergency Finance Mechanism'. As such, the crisis could be seen as the failure to adequately build capacity in time to prevent Currency Manipulation. This hypothesis enjoyed little support among economists, however, who argue that no single investor could have had enough impact on the market to successfully manipulate the currencies' values. In addition, the level of organization necessary to coordinate a massive exodus of investors from Southeast Asian currencies in order to manipulate their values rendered this possibility remote.

IMF role

Such was the scope and the severity of the collapses involved that outside intervention, considered by many as a new kind of colonialism, became urgently needed. Since the countries melting down were among not only the richest in their region, but in the world, and since hundreds of billions of dollars were at stake, any response to the crisis was likely to be cooperative and international, in this case through the International Monetary Fund

International Monetary Fund

(IMF). The IMF created a series of bailouts

Bail out (finance)

In economics, a bailout is an act of loaning or giving capital to an entity that is in danger of failing, in an attempt to save it from bankruptcy, insolvency, or total liquidation and ruin; or to allow a failing entity to fail gracefully without spreading contagion.-Overview:A bailout could be...

("rescue packages") for the most-affected economies to enable affected nations to avoid default

Default (finance)

, tying the packages to reforms that were intended to make the restored Asian currency, banking, and financial systems more like those of the United States and Europe. In other words, the IMF's support was conditional on a series of drastic economic reforms influenced by neoliberal economic principles called a "structural adjustment

Structural adjustment

Structural adjustments are the policies implemented by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in developing countries. These policy changes are conditions for getting new loans from the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, or for obtaining lower interest rates on existing loans...

package" (SAP). The SAPs called on crisis-struck nations to reduce government spending and deficits, allow insolvent

Insolvency

Insolvency means the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due. Usually used to refer to a business, insolvency refers to the inability of a company to pay off its debts.Business insolvency is defined in two different ways:...

banks and financial institutions to fail, and aggressively raise interest rates. The reasoning was that these steps would restore confidence in the nations' fiscal solvency

Solvency

Solvency, in finance or business, is the degree to which the current assets of an individual or entity exceed the current liabilities of that individual or entity. Solvency can also be described as the ability of a corporation to meet its long-term fixed expenses and to accomplish long-term...

, penalize insolvent companies, and protect currency values. Above all, it was stipulated that IMF-funded capital had to be administered rationally in the future, with no favored parties receiving funds by preference. In at least one of the affected countries the restrictions on foreign ownership were greatly reduced. There were to be adequate government controls set up to supervise all financial activities, ones that were to be independent, in theory, of private interest. Insolvent institutions had to be closed, and insolvency itself had to be clearly defined. In short, exactly the same kinds of financial institutions found in the United States and Europe had to be created in Asia, as a condition for IMF support. In addition, financial systems were to become "transparent", that is, provide the kind of reliable financial information used in the West to make sound financial decisions.

However, the greatest criticism of the IMF's role in the crisis was targeted towards its response. As country after country fell into crisis, many local businesses and governments that had taken out loans in US dollars, which suddenly became much more expensive relative to the local currency which formed their earned income, found themselves unable to pay their creditors. The dynamics of the situation were similar to that of the Latin American debt crisis

Latin American debt crisis

The Latin American debt crisis was a financial crisis that occurred in the early 1980s , often known as the "lost decade", when Latin American countries reached a point where their foreign debt exceeded their earning power and they were not able to repay it.-Origins:In the 1960s and 1970s many...

. The effects of the SAPs were mixed and their impact controversial. Critics, however, noted the contractionary nature of these policies, arguing that in a recession

Recession

In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...

, the traditional Keynesian response was to increase government spending, prop up major companies, and lower interest rates. The reasoning was that by stimulating the economy and staving off recession, governments could restore confidence while preventing economic loss

Pure economic loss

Economic loss refers to financial loss and damage suffered by a person such as can be seen only on a balance sheet rather than as physical injury to the person or destruction of property...

. They pointed out that the U.S. government had pursued expansionary policies, such as lowering interest rates, increasing government spending, and cutting taxes, when the United States itself entered a recession in 2001, and arguably the same in the fiscal and monetary policies during the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis.

The reforms were, in most cases, long needed and the countries most involved almost completely restructured their financial frameworks. They suffered permanent currency devaluations, massive numbers of bankruptcies, collapses of whole sectors of once-booming economies, real estate busts, high unemployment, and social unrest. For most of the countries involved, IMF intervention has been roundly criticized. The role of the International Monetary Fund was so controversial during the crisis that many locals called the financial crisis the "IMF crisis". Many commentators in retrospect criticized the IMF for encouraging the developing economies of Asia down the path of "fast track capitalism", meaning liberalization of the financial sector (elimination of restrictions on capital flows); maintenance of high domestic interest rates to attract portfolio investment and bank capital; and pegging of the national currency to the dollar to reassure foreign investors against currency risk.

IMF and high interest rates

The conventional high-interest-rate economic wisdom is normally employed by monetary authorities to attain the chain objectives of tightened money supply, discouraged currency speculation, stabilized exchange rate, curbed currency depreciation, and ultimately contained inflation.

In the Asian meltdown, highest IMF officials rationalized their prescribed high interest rates as follows:

From then IMF First Deputy Managing Director, Stanley Fischer (Stanley Fischer, "The IMF and the Asian Crisis," Forum Funds Lecture at UCLA, Los Angeles on March 20, 1998):

”When their governments "approached the IMF, the reserves of Thailand and South Korea were perilously low, and the Indonesian Rupiah was excessively depreciated. Thus, the first order of business was... to restore confidence in the currency. To achieve this, countries have to make it more attractive to hold domestic currency, which in turn, requires increasing interest rates temporarily, even if higher interest costs complicate the situation of weak banks and corporations...

"Why not operate with lower interest rates and a greater devaluation? This is a relevant tradeoff, but there can be no question that the degree of devaluation in the Asian countries is excessive, both from the viewpoint of the individual countries, and from the viewpoint of the international system. Looking first to the individual country, companies with substantial foreign currency debts, as so many companies in these countries have, stood to suffer far more from… currency (depreciation) than from a temporary rise in domestic interest rates…. Thus, on macroeconomics… monetary policy has to be kept tight to restore confidence in the currency...."

From the then IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus ("Doctor Knows Best?" Asiaweek, 17 July 1998, p. 46):

"To reverse (currency depreciation), countries have to make it more attractive to hold domestic currency, and that means temporarily raising interest rates, even if this (hurts) weak banks and corporations."

Thailand

From 1985 to 1996, Thailand

Thailand

's economy grew at an average of over 9% per year, the highest economic growth rate of any country at the time. Inflation was kept reasonably low within a range of 3.4–5.7%. The baht was pegged at 25 to the US dollar.

On 14 May and 15 May 1997, the Thai baht

Thai baht

was hit by massive speculative attacks. On 30 June 1997, Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh

Chavalit Yongchaiyudh

General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh is a Thai politician and retired general. He was Thailand's 22nd Prime Minister from 1996 to 1997. He is of Sino-Thai and ethnic Lao descent....

said that he would not devalue the baht. This was the spark that ignited the Asian financial crisis as the Thai government failed to defend the baht, which was pegged to the basket of currencies in which the U.S. dollar was the main component, against international speculators. Thailand's booming economy came to a halt amid massive layoffs in finance, real estate, and construction that resulted in huge numbers of workers returning to their villages in the countryside and 600,000 foreign workers being sent back to their home countries. The baht devalued swiftly and lost more than half of its value. The baht reached its lowest point of 56 units to the US dollar in January 1998. The Thai stock market dropped 75%. Finance One, the largest Thai finance company until then, collapsed.

The Thai government was eventually forced to float the Baht, on 2 July 1997. On 11 August 1997, the IMF unveiled a rescue package for Thailand with more than $17 billion, subject to conditions such as passing laws relating to bankruptcy (reorganizing and restructuring) procedures and establishing strong regulation frameworks for banks and other financial institutions. The IMF approved on 20 August 1997, another bailout package of $3.9 billion.

By 2001, Thailand's economy had recovered. The increasing tax revenues allowed the country to balance its budget and repay its debts to the IMF in 2003, four years ahead of schedule. The Thai baht continued to appreciate to 29 Baht to the Dollar in October 2010.

Indonesia

In June 1997, Indonesia seemed far from crisis. Unlike Thailand, Indonesia had low inflation, a trade surplus of more than $900 million, huge foreign exchange reserves of more than $20 billion, and a good banking sector. But a large number of Indonesian corporations had been borrowing in U.S. dollars. During the preceding years, as the rupiah had strengthened respective to the dollar, this practice had worked well for these corporations; their effective levels of debt and financing costs had decreased as the local currency's value rose.

In July 1997, when Thailand floated the baht, Indonesia's monetary authorities widened the rupiah trading band from 8% to 12%. The rupiah suddenly came under severe attack in August. On 14 August 1997, the managed floating exchange regime was replaced by a free-floating exchange rate arrangement. The rupiah dropped further. The IMF came forward with a rescue package of $23 billion, but the rupiah was sinking further amid fears over corporate debts, massive selling of rupiah, and strong demand for dollars. The rupiah and the Jakarta Stock Exchange

Jakarta Stock Exchange

Jakarta Stock Exchange or in Indonesian Bursa Efek Jakarta was a stock exchange based in Jakarta, Indonesia, before it merged with the Surabaya Stock Exchange to form the Indonesian Stock Exchange.-History:...

touched a historic low in September. Moody's

Moody's

Moody's Corporation is the holding company for Moody's Analytics and Moody's Investors Service, a credit rating agency which performs international financial research and analysis on commercial and government entities. The company also ranks the credit-worthiness of borrowers using a standardized...

eventually downgraded Indonesia's long-term debt to 'junk bond'.

Although the rupiah crisis began in July and August 1997, it intensified in November when the effects of that summer devaluation showed up on corporate balance sheets. Companies that had borrowed in dollars had to face the higher costs imposed upon them by the rupiah's decline, and many reacted by buying dollars through selling rupiah, undermining the value of the latter further. In February 1998, President Suharto sacked Bank Indonesia

Bank Indonesia

Bank Indonesia is the central bank of The Republic of Indonesia. Bank Indonesia is currently governed by Darmin Nasution, former interim governor. The last governor before the interim phase, Boediono, resigned due to his vice presidential candidacy in the Indonesian presidential election...

Governor J. Soedradjad Djiwandono

J. Soedradjad Djiwandono

Joseph Soedradjad Djiwandono was the Governor of Bank Indonesia, the nation's central bank, from 1993 until his sudden dismissal in 1998....

, but this proved insufficient. Suharto resigned under public pressure in May 1998 and Vice President B. J. Habibie was elevated in his place. Before the crisis, the exchange rate between the rupiah and the dollar was roughly 2,600 rupiah to 1 USD. The rate plunged to over 11,000 rupiah to 1 USD on 9 January 1998, with spot rates over 14,000 during January 23–26 and trading again over 14,000 for about six weeks during June–July 1998. On 31 December 1998, the rate was almost exactly 8,000 to 1 USD. Indonesia lost 13.5% of its GDP that year.

South Korea

The banking sector was burdened with non-performing loan

Non-performing loan

A Non-performing loan is a loan that is in default or close to being in default. Many loans become non-performing after being in default for 3 months, but this can depend on the contract terms....

s as its large corporations were funding aggressive expansions. During that time, there was a haste to build great conglomerates to compete on the world stage. Many businesses ultimately failed to ensure returns and profitability. The South Korean conglomerates, more or less completely controlled by the government, simply absorbed more and more capital investment. Eventually, excess debt led to major failures and takeovers. For example, in July 1997, South Korea's third-largest car maker, Kia Motors

Kia Motors

Kia Motors , headquartered in Seoul, is South Korea's second-largest automobile manufacturer, following the Hyundai Motor Company, with sales of over 1.4 million vehicles in 2010...

, asked for emergency loans. In the wake of the Asian market downturn, Moody's lowered the credit rating

Credit rating

A credit rating evaluates the credit worthiness of an issuer of specific types of debt, specifically, debt issued by a business enterprise such as a corporation or a government. It is an evaluation made by a credit rating agency of the debt issuers likelihood of default. Credit ratings are...

of South Korea from A1 to A3, on 28 November 1997, and downgraded again to B2 on 11 December. That contributed to a further decline in South Korean shares since stock markets were already bearish in November. The Seoul stock exchange

Korea Exchange

Korea Exchange is the sole securities exchange operator in South Korea. It is headquartered in Busan, and has an office for cash markets and market oversight in Seoul.- History :...

fell by 4% on 7 November 1997. On 8 November, it plunged by 7%, its biggest one-day drop to that date. And on 24 November, stocks fell a further 7.2% on fears that the IMF would demand tough reforms. In 1998, Hyundai Motors took over Kia Motors. Samsung

Samsung

The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...

Motors' $5 billion venture was dissolved due to the crisis, and eventually Daewoo

Daewoo

Daewoo or the Daewoo Group was a major South Korean chaebol . It was founded on 22 March 1967 as Daewoo Industrial and was dismantled by the Korean government in 1999...

Motors was sold to the American company General Motors

General Motors

General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

(GM).

The South Korean won, meanwhile, weakened to more than 1,700 per U.S. dollar from around 800. Despite an initial sharp economic slowdown and numerous corporate bankruptcies, South Korea has managed to triple its per capita GDP in dollar terms since 1997. Indeed, it resumed its role as the world's fastest-growing economy—since 1960, per capita GDP has grown from $80 in nominal terms to more than $21,000 as of 2007. However, like the chaebol

Chaebol

Chaebol refers to a South Korean form of business conglomerate. They are global multinationals owning numerous international enterprises. The term is often used in a context similar to that of the English word "conglomerate"...

, South Korea's government did not escape unscathed. Its national debt-to-GDP ratio more than doubled (approximately 13% to 30%) as a result of the crisis.

In South Korea, the crisis is also commonly referred to as the IMF crisis.

Philippines

The Philippine central bank

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and commonly abbreviated as BSP is the central bank of the Philippines. It was rechartered on July 3, 1993, pursuant to the provision of the 1987 Philippine Constitution and the New Central Bank Act of 1993...

raised interest rates by 1.75 percentage points in May 1997 and again by 2 points on 19 June. Thailand triggered the crisis on 2 July and on 3 July, the Philippine Central Bank intervened to defend the peso

Philippine peso

The peso is the currency of the Philippines. It is subdivided into 100 centavos . Before 1967, the language used on the banknotes and coins was English and so "peso" was the name used...

, raising the overnight rate from 15% to 32% at the onset of the Asian crisis in mid-July 1997. The peso dropped from 26 pesos per dollar at the start of the crisis to 38 pesos in mid-1999 to 54 pesos as in early August, 2001.

The Philippine GDP contracted by 0.6% during the worst part of the crisis, but grew by 3% by 2001, despite scandals of the administration of Joseph Estrada

Joseph Estrada

Joseph "Erap" Ejercito Estrada was the 13th President of the Philippines, serving from 1998 until 2001. Estrada was the first person in the Post-EDSA era to be elected both to the presidency and vice-presidency.Estrada gained popularity as a film actor, playing the lead role in over 100 films in...

in 2001, most notably the "jueteng" scandal, causing the PSE Composite Index

PSE Composite Index

The PSE Composite Index, commonly known previously as the PHISIX and presently as the PSEi, is the main stock market index of the Philippine Stock Exchange....

, the main index of the Philippine Stock Exchange, to fall to 1000 points from a high of 3000 points in 1997. The peso's value declined to about 55 pesos to the US dollar. Later that year, Estrada was on the verge of impeachment but his allies in the senate voted against continuing the proceedings. This led to popular protests culminating in the "EDSA II Revolution", which effected his resignation and elevated Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a Filipino politician who served as the 14th President of the Philippines from 2001 to 2010, as the 12th Vice President of the Philippines from 1998 to 2001, and is currently a member of the House of Representatives representing the 2nd District of Pampanga...

to the presidency. Arroyo lessened the crisis in the country. The Philippine peso rose to about 50 pesos by the year's end and traded at around 41 pesos to a dollar in late 2007. The stock market also reached an all time high in 2007 and the economy was growing by more than 7 percent, its highest in nearly two decades.

Malaysia

Before the crisis, Malaysia had a large current account deficit of 5% of its GDP

Gross domestic product

Gross domestic product refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living....

. At the time, Malaysia was a popular investment destination, and this was reflected in KLSE

Bursa Malaysia

Bursa Malaysia is an exchange holding company approved under Section 15 of the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007. It operates a fully integrated exchange, offering the complete range of exchange-related services including trading, clearing, settlement and depository services.- History :Bursa...

activity which was regularly the most active stock exchange in the world (with turnover exceeding even markets with far higher capitalization

Capitalization

Capitalization is writing a word with its first letter as a majuscule and the remaining letters in minuscules . This of course only applies to those writing systems which have a case distinction...

like the New York Stock Exchange

New York Stock Exchange

The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...

). Expectations at the time were that the growth rate would continue, propelling Malaysia to developed status

Developed country

A developed country is a country that has a high level of development according to some criteria. Which criteria, and which countries are classified as being developed, is a contentious issue...

by 2020, a government policy articulated in Wawasan 2020

Wawasan 2020

Wawasan 2020 or Vision 2020 is a Malaysian ideal introduced by the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad during the tabling of the Sixth Malaysia Plan in 1991...

. At the start of 1997, the KLSE Composite

Composite (finance)

A composite or a composite index is combination of equities or indexes intended to measure the overall market performance over time.A composite index may also be used in the natural or social sciences to summarize complex or multidimensional data or redundant measures...

index

Index (economics)

In economics and finance, an index is a statistical measure of changes in a representative group of individual data points. These data may be derived from any number of sources, including company performance, prices, productivity, and employment. Economic indices track economic health from...

was above 1,200, the ringgit was trading above 2.50 to the dollar, and the overnight rate

Overnight rate

The overnight rate is generally the rate that large banks use to borrow and lend from one another on the overnight market. In some countries , the overnight rate may be the rate targeted by the central bank to influence monetary policy...

was below 7%.

In July 1997, within days of the Thai baht

Thai baht

devaluation, the Malaysian ringgit

Ringgit

Ringgit mostly refers to the Malaysian ringgit, which is the local currency in Malaysia, but it can also refer to the Brunei dollar or Singapore dollar in the Malay language. The word ringgit was originally used to refer to the serrated edges of Spanish silver dollars widely circulated in the area...

was "attacked" by speculators. The overnight rate jumped from under 8% to over 40%. This led to rating downgrades and a general sell off on the stock and currency markets. By end of 1997, ratings had fallen many notches from investment grade to junk, the KLSE had lost more than 50% from above 1,200 to under 600, and the ringgit had lost 50% of its value, falling from above 2.50 to under 4.57 on (Jan 23, 1998) to the dollar. The then premier, Mahathir Mohammad imposed strict capital controls and introduced a 3.80 peg against the US dollar.

In 1998, the output of the real economy declined plunging the country into its first recession for many years. The construction sector contracted 23.5%, manufacturing shrunk 9% and the agriculture sector 5.9%. Overall, the country's gross domestic product plunged 6.2% in 1998. During that year, the ringgit plunged below 4.7 and the KLSE fell below 270 points. In September that year, various defensive measures were announced to overcome the crisis. The principal measure taken were to move the ringgit from a free float to a fixed exchange rate regime. Bank Negara fixed the ringgit at 3.8 to the dollar. Capital controls were imposed while aid offered from the IMF was refused. Various task force agencies were formed. The Corporate Debt Restructuring Committee dealt with corporate loans. Danaharta discounted and bought bad loans from banks to facilitate orderly asset realization. Danamodal recapitalized banks.

Growth then settled at a slower but more sustainable pace. The massive current account deficit became a fairly substantial surplus. Banks were better capitalized and NPLs were realised in an orderly way. Small banks were bought out by strong ones. A large number of PLCs were unable to regulate their financial affairs and were delisted. Compared to the 1997 current account, by 2005, Malaysia was estimated to have a US$14.06 billion surplus. Asset values however, have not returned to their pre-crisis highs. In 2005 the last of the crisis measures were removed as the ringgit was taken off the fixed exchange system. But unlike the pre-crisis days, it did not appear to be a free float, but a managed float, like the Singapore dollar

Singapore dollar

The Singapore dollar or Dollar is the official currency of Singapore. It is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or alternatively S$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...

Singapore

As the financial crisis spread

Financial contagion

the economy of Singapore dipped into a short recession. The short duration and milder effect on its economy was credited to the active management by the government. For example, the Monetary Authority of Singapore

Monetary Authority of Singapore

The Monetary Authority of Singapore is Singapore's central bank and financial regulatory authority...

allowed for a gradual 20% depreciation of the Singapore dollar

Singapore dollar

to cushion and guide the economy to a soft landing. The timing of government programs such as the Interim Upgrading Program and other construction related projects were brought forward. Instead of allowing the labor markets to work, the National Wage Council pre-emptively agreed to Central Provident Fund

Central Provident Fund

In Singapore, the Central Provident Fund is a compulsory comprehensive savings plan for working Singaporeans and permanent residents primarily to fund their retirement, healthcare and housing needs. It is administered by the Central Provident Fund Board, a statutory board under the Ministry of...

cuts to lower labor costs, with limited impact on disposable income

Disposable income

Disposable income is total personal income minus personal current taxes. In national accounts definitions, personal income, minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income...

and local demand. Unlike in Hong Kong, no attempt was made to directly intervene in the capital market

Capital market

A capital market is a market for securities , where business enterprises and governments can raise long-term funds. It is defined as a market in which money is provided for periods longer than a year, as the raising of short-term funds takes place on other markets...

s and the Straits Times Index

Straits Times Index

The FTSE Straits Times Index is a capitalization-weighted stock market index that is regarded as the benchmark index for the Singapore stock market. It tracks the performance of the top 30 companies listed on the Singapore Exchange...

was allowed to drop 60%. In less than a year, the Singaporean economy fully recovered and continued on its growth trajectory.

China

The Chinese currency, the renminbi

Renminbi

The Renminbi is the official currency of the People's Republic of China . Renminbi is legal tender in mainland China, but not in Hong Kong or Macau. It is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of the PRC...

(RMB), had been pegged to the US dollar

Fixed exchange rate

at a ratio of 8.3 RMB to the dollar, in 1994. Having largely kept itself above the fray throughout 1997–1998 there was heavy speculation in the Western

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

press that China would soon be forced to devalue its currency to protect the competitiveness of its exports vis-a-vis those of the ASEAN nations, whose exports became cheaper relative to China's. However, the RMB's non-convertibility

Convertibility

Convertibility is the quality that allows money or other financial instruments to be converted into other liquid stores of value. Convertibility is an important factor in international trade, where instruments valued in different currencies must be exchanged....

protected its value from currency speculators, and the decision was made to maintain the peg of the currency, thereby improving the country's standing within Asia. The currency peg was partly scrapped in July 2005 rising 2.3% against the dollar, reflecting pressure from the United States.

Unlike investments of many of the Southeast Asian nations, almost all of China's foreign investment took the form of factories on the ground rather than securities, which insulated the country from rapid capital flight

Capital flight

. While China was unaffected by the crisis compared to Southeast Asia and South Korea, GDP growth slowed sharply in 1998 and 1999, calling attention to structural problems within its economy. In particular, the Asian financial crisis convinced the Chinese government

Government of the People's Republic of China

All power within the government of the People's Republic of China is divided among three bodies: the People's Republic of China, State Council, and the People's Liberation Army . This article is concerned with the formal structure of the state, its departments and their responsibilities...

of the need to resolve the issues of its enormous financial weaknesses, such as having too many non-performing loans within its banking system, and relying heavily on trade with the United States.

United States and Japan

The "Asian flu" had also put pressure on the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

and Japan

Japan

. Their markets did not collapse, but they were severely hit. On 27 October 1997, the Dow Jones industrial

Dow Jones Industrial Average

The Dow Jones Industrial Average , also called the Industrial Average, the Dow Jones, the Dow 30, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index, and one of several indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow...

plunged 554 points or 7.2%, amid ongoing worries about the Asian economies

Economy of Asia

. The New York Stock Exchange

New York Stock Exchange

briefly suspended trading. The crisis led to a drop in consumer

Consumer confidence

Consumer confidence is an economic indicator which measures the degree of optimism that consumers feel about the overall state of the economy and their personal financial situation. How confident people feel about stability of their incomes determines their spending activity and therefore serves as...

and spending confidence (see 27 October 1997 mini-crash

October 27, 1997 mini-crash

The October 27, 1997 mini-crash is the name of a global stock market crash that was caused by an economic crisis in Asia. The points loss that the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered on this day still ranks as the eighth biggest point loss in its 114-year existence...

). Indirect effects included the dot-com bubble

Dot-com bubble

The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

, and years later the housing bubble

United States housing bubble

The United States housing bubble is an economic bubble affecting many parts of the United States housing market in over half of American states. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and may not yet have hit bottom as of 2011. On December 30, 2008 the...

and the Subprime mortgage crisis

Subprime mortgage crisis

The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was one of the first indicators of the late-2000s financial crisis, characterized by a rise in subprime mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, and the resulting decline of securities backed by said mortgages....

. Japan was affected because its economy is prominent in the region. Asian countries usually run a trade deficit with Japan because the latter's economy was more than twice the size of the rest of Asia together; about 40% of Japan's exports go to Asia. The Japanese yen

Japanese yen

The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third most traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a reserve currency after the U.S. dollar, the euro and the pound sterling...

fell to 147 as mass selling began, but Japan was the world's largest holder of currency reserves at the time, so it was easily defended, and quickly bounced back. GDP real growth rate slowed dramatically in 1997, from 5% to 1.6% and even sank into recession in 1998, due to intense competition from cheapened rivals. The Asian financial crisis also led to more bankruptcies in Japan. In addition, with South Korea's devalued currency, and China's steady gains, many companies complained outright that they could not compete.

Another longer-term result was the changing relationship between the U.S. and Japan, with the U.S. no longer openly supporting the highly artificial trade environment and exchange rates that governed economic relations between the two countries for almost five decades after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

Asia

The crisis had significant macroeconomic

Macroeconomics

Macroeconomics is a branch of economics dealing with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of the whole economy. This includes a national, regional, or global economy...

-level effects, including sharp reductions in values of currencies, stock market

Stock market

A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...

s, and other asset prices of several Asian countries. The nominal U.S. dollar GDP of ASEAN fell by US$9.2 billion in 1997 and $218.2 billion (31.7%) in 1998. In South Korea, the $170.9 billion fall in 1998 was equal to 33.1% of the 1997 GDP. Many businesses collapsed, and as a consequence, millions of people fell below the poverty line in 1997–1998. Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand were the countries most affected by the crisis.

Currency	\|Exchange rate (per US$1)	\|Change
Currency	June 1997	July 1998
Thai baht Thai baht The baht is the currency of Thailand. It is subdivided into 100 satang . The issuance of currency is the responsibility of the Bank of Thailand.-History:The baht, like the pound, originated from a traditional unit of mass...	24.5	41	40.2%
Indonesian rupiah Indonesian rupiah The rupiah is the official currency of Indonesia. Issued and controlled by the Bank of Indonesia, the ISO 4217 currency code for the Indonesian rupiah is IDR. Informally, Indonesians also use the word "perak" in referring to rupiah...	2,380	14,150	83.2%
Philippine peso Philippine peso The peso is the currency of the Philippines. It is subdivided into 100 centavos . Before 1967, the language used on the banknotes and coins was English and so "peso" was the name used...	26.3	42	37.4%
Malaysian ringgit Malaysian ringgit The Malaysian ringgit is the currency of Malaysia. It is divided into 100 sen...	2.5	4.1	39.0%
South Korean won South Korean won The won is the currency of South Korea. A single won is divided into 100 jeon, the monetary subunit. The jeon is no longer used for everyday transactions, and appears only in foreign exchange rates...	850	1,290	34.1%

Country	\|GNP GNP Gross National Product is the market value of all products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the residents of a country... (US$1 billion)	\|Change
Country	June 1997	July 1998
	170	102	40.0%
	205	34	83.4%
	75	47	37.3%
	90	55	38.9%
	430	283	34.2%

The above tabulation shows that despite the prompt raising of interest rates to 32% in the Philippines upon the onset of crisis in mid-July 1997, and to 65% in Indonesia upon the intensification of crisis in 1998, their local currencies depreciated just the same and did not perform better than those of South Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia, which countries had their high interest rates set at generally lower than 20% during the Asian crisis. This created grave doubts on the credibility of IMF and the validity of its high-interest-rate prescription to economic crisis.

The economic crisis also led to a political upheaval, most notably culminating in the resignations of President Suharto in Indonesia and Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh

Chavalit Yongchaiyudh

General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh is a Thai politician and retired general. He was Thailand's 22nd Prime Minister from 1996 to 1997. He is of Sino-Thai and ethnic Lao descent....

in Thailand. There was a general rise in anti-Western sentiment

Anti-Western sentiment

Anti-Western sentiment refers to broad opposition or hostility to the people, policies, or governments in the western world. In many cases the United States, Israël and the United Kingdom are the subject of discussion or hostility...

, with George Soros

George Soros

George Soros is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philosopher, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes...

and the IMF in particular singled out as targets of criticisms. Heavy U.S. investment in Thailand ended, replaced by mostly European investment, though Japanese investment was sustained. Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic and other separatist movements intensified in Southeast Asia as central authorities weakened.

More long-term consequences included reversal of the relative gains made in the boom years just preceding the crisis. Nominal US dollar GDP per capital fell 42.3% in Indonesia in 1997, 21.2% in Thailand, 19% in Malaysia, 18.5% in South Korea and 12.5% in the Philippines. The CIA World Factbook reported that the per capita income

Per capita income

Per capita income or income per person is a measure of mean income within an economic aggregate, such as a country or city. It is calculated by taking a measure of all sources of income in the aggregate and dividing it by the total population...

(measured by purchasing power parity

Purchasing power parity

In economics, purchasing power parity is a condition between countries where an amount of money has the same purchasing power in different countries. The prices of the goods between the countries would only reflect the exchange rates...

) in Thailand declined from $8,800 to $8,300 between 1997 and 2005; in Indonesia it declined from $4,600 to $3,700; in Malaysia it declined from $11,100 to $10,400. Over the same period, world per capita income rose from $6,500 to $9,300. Indeed, the Central Intelligence Agency

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

's analysis asserted that the economy of Indonesia was still smaller in 2005 than it had been in 1997, suggesting an impact on that country similar to that of the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. Within East Asia, the bulk of investment and a significant amount of economic weight shifted from Japan and ASEAN to China and India.

The crisis has been intensively analyzed by economists for its breadth, speed, and dynamism; it affected dozens of countries, had a direct impact on the livelihood of millions, happened within the course of a mere few months, and at each stage of the crisis leading economists, in particular the international institutions, seemed a step behind. Perhaps more interesting to economists was the speed with which it ended, leaving most of the developed economies unharmed. These curiosities have prompted an explosion of literature about financial economics

Financial economics

Financial Economics is the branch of economics concerned with "the allocation and deployment of economic resources, both spatially and across time, in an uncertain environment"....

and a litany of explanations why the crisis occurred. A number of critiques have been leveled against the conduct of the IMF in the crisis, including one by former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz. Politically there were some benefits. In several countries, particularly South Korea and Indonesia, there was renewed push for improved corporate governance

Corporate governance

Corporate governance is a number of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions which have impact on the way a company is controlled...

. Rampaging inflation weakened the authority of the Suharto regime and led to its toppling in 1998, as well as accelerating East Timor

East Timor

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...

's independence.

Outside Asia

After the Asian crisis, international investors were reluctant to lend to developing countries, leading to economic slowdowns in developing countries in many parts of the world. The powerful negative shock also sharply reduced the price of oil, which reached a low of about $11 per barrel towards the end of 1998, causing a financial pinch in OPEC

OPEC

OPEC is an intergovernmental organization of twelve developing countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. OPEC has maintained its headquarters in Vienna since 1965, and hosts regular meetings...

nations and other oil exporters. This reduction in oil revenue contributed to the 1998 Russian financial crisis, which in turn caused Long-Term Capital Management

Long-Term Capital Management

Long-Term Capital Management L.P. was a speculative hedge fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut that utilized absolute-return trading strategies combined with high leverage...

in the United States to collapse after losing $4.6 billion in 4 months. A wider collapse in the financial markets was avoided when Alan Greenspan

Alan Greenspan

and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Federal Reserve Bank of New York

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States. It is located at 33 Liberty Street, New York, NY. It is responsible for the Second District of the Federal Reserve System, which encompasses New York state, the 12 northern counties of New Jersey,...

organized a $3.625 billion bail-out. Major emerging economies Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

and Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

also fell into crisis in the late 1990s (see Argentine debt crisis).

The crisis in general was part of a global backlash against the Washington Consensus

Washington Consensus

The term Washington Consensus was coined in 1989 by the economist John Williamson to describe a set of ten relatively specific economic policy prescriptions that he considered constituted the "standard" reform package promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries...

and institutions such as the IMF and World Bank

World Bank

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...

, which simultaneously became unpopular in developed countries following the rise of the anti-globalization movement

Anti-globalization movement

The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalisation movement, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or...

in 1999. Four major rounds of world trade talks since the crisis, in Seattle, Doha

Doha

Doha is the capital city of the state of Qatar. Located on the Persian Gulf, it had a population of 998,651 in 2008, and is also one of the municipalities of Qatar...

, Cancún

Cancún

Cancún is a city of international tourism development certified by the UNWTO . Located on the northeast coast of Quintana Roo in southern Mexico, more than 1,700 km from Mexico City, the Project began operations in 1974 as Integrally Planned Center, a pioneer of FONATUR Cancún is a city of...

, and Hong Kong, have failed to produce a significant agreement as developing countries have become more assertive, and nations are increasingly turning toward regional or bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) as an alternative to global institutions. Many nations learned from this, and quickly built up foreign exchange reserves as a hedge against attacks, including Japan, China, South Korea. Pan Asian currency swaps were introduced in the event of another crisis. However, interestingly enough, such nations as Brazil, Russia, and India as well as most of East Asia began copying the Japanese model of weakening their currencies, restructuring their economies so as to create a current account surplus to build large foreign currency reserves. This has led to an ever increasing funding for US treasury bonds, allowing or aiding housing (in 2001–2005) and stock asset bubbles (in 1996–2000) to develop in the United States.

External links

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History

IMF role

IMF and high interest rates

Thailand

Indonesia

South Korea

Philippines

Malaysia

Singapore

China

United States and Japan

Asia

Outside Asia

See also

External links