The Currency Crisis In Southeast Asia

Traces The Development Experience Of Indonesia, Malaysia And Thailand In The Pre-And Post Asian Crisis Period. Highlights The Lessons That Developing Countries Can Draw From The Same. Has 8 Chapters The Last Bring Conclusions And Suggestions. 2 Annexures.

Southeast Asia is suddenly in crisis, the largest country - Indonesia - deeply so. This volume, comprising a set of specially commissioned papers, examines the origins, lessons, and future path of the crisis. Why didn't economists foresee the sudden and catastrophic events of 1997-98? How can seemingly robust and vigorous economies fall so far, so swiftly? Do we, in consequence, need to change the way we view the world? Is there anything to salvage of the "East Asian miracle"? Is Southeast Asia about to experience its own version of the "lost decade", analogous to that which afflicted much of Africa and Latin America in the 1980s?

The deep currency crisis which erupted in the beginning of July 1997 among the rapidly growing economies of Southeast Asia raises the question: "Have the rapid rates of growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s mortgaged the economic futures of these economies?" This book examines the economic bases for the crisis and characterizes the nature of the policy weaknesses that led to the crisis. Drawing on the specific features of the crises in Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia and the pattern of contagion in the region, this Updated Edition suggests a list of global policy lessons that can be distilled from Asia's crisis.

What started in the summer of 1997 as a regional economic and financial crisis in East and Southeast Asia had developed into a global financial crisis within the span of a year. This crisis followed the crisis in the European Monetary System in 1992-3 and the Mexican peso crisis in 1994-5. However, unlike the previous two crises, the scale and depth of the Asian crisis surprised everyone. One obvious reason for this is East and Southeast Asia'strack record of economic success. Since the 1960s, no other group of countries in the world has produced more rapid economic growth or such a dramatic reduction in poverty. Given so many years of sustained economic performance the obvious question is: how could events in Asia unfold as they did?

In August 1998, the Asian currency crisis that had started in mid-1997 metastasized into a global financial crisis with the devaluation of the rouble and a declaration of a Russian Government default on its internal debt. Is this the first wave of such crises the world will see in the future? One common feature among the countries that have fallen victim to the crisis is that they were all "darlings of international finance". Before the financial crisis of 1997, international investors poured money into the stock markets of the East Asian economies, Latin America, Russia, and Eastern Europe. That the crisis afflicted the very countries that depended most heavily on the international economy for their economic growth suggests the importance of the international dimension -- this is the focus of this book. Even though, from the outside, the currency collapses looked similar, the analysis also identifies the important differences in domestic causes as it spread through the different economies.

This book is a fascinating account of the financial disaster which overtook Southeast Asia in 1997. The author explains the causes, events, reactions, and effects of the Asian currency crisis. Starting with the crash of the Thai baht, Professor Tan traces the chain of events and details the economic, social and political consequences in the countries involved, plus the responses of the major economic institutions like the World Bank and IMF are described. He also includes a chapter on the Asian economic miracle in the years before the crash, and asks whether that sort of growth is sustainable anyway. The final chapters deal with the lessons to be learned and the possible paths to recovery. This book is essential reading for anyone in the fields of finance, economics, or politics, but it is also interesting and accessible to the lay reader with an interest in world economies.

This book incorporates a selection of eight revised papers presented at the Conference on "Managing Economic Crisis in Southeast Asia", organized jointly by the Saw Centre for Financial Studies, NUS Business School and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, in January 2010. The chapters deal with the management of the 2008-09 economic crisis in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the region as a whole. They represent an analysis of the impact of the economic crisis and the stimulus packages that were swiftly put in place by the governments to mitigate the economic recession and to pave the way for a quick recovery. The success of the monetary and fiscal policy measures in engendering a strong economic recovery in these countries is also discussed in considerable depth. The book, with contributions from experts on the topics covered, will be extremely valuable to businessmen, analysts, academics, students, policy-makers and the general public interested in seeking a greater understanding of the sub-prime crisis that led to the global economic recession.