Brokers are jumping off hotel balconies in Hong Kong. In Thailand, the government has put out a mental health alert. Suicide hotline switchboards are jammed in Korea. Currencies have become worthless (the value of the Indonesian rupiah against the dollar plunged 80 percent in four months) and stock markets are reeling. Amidst the carcasses of East Asian tigers, there is a frantic search for someone to blame.
Brokers are jumping off hotel balconies in Hong Kong. In Thailand, the government has put out a mental health alert. Suicide hotline switchboards are jammed in Korea. Currencies have become worthless (the value of the Indonesian rupiah against the dollar plunged 80 percent in four months) and stock markets are reeling. Amidst the carcasses of East Asian tigers, there is a frantic search for someone to blame.
Op-ed pages are suddenly spiked with we-told-you-so pundits. And the biggest of these self-righteous sources of unsolicited advice is the International Monetary Fund whose high priests till as late as June last year were praising Thailand for getting things right. When, under speculator pressure, the Thai baht tumbled in July and the contagion spread to neighbours, the same guys shook their heads and cluck-clucked. From Seoul to Jakarta, on the hour every hour, we watched on CNN Caucasians in heroic ties and suits offering multi-billion-dollar bailouts to sheepish central bank chairmen.
There was no attempt anymore to suppress the victory dance of Western triumphalism – first Communism, and now those upstart tigers that were threatening us with all their talk of the Pacific Century. The IMF has only one pill- it prescribesaspirins for both headaches and hernia. prise anyone if it did not put the interests of its OECD masters above everything else. The Fund has only one pill – it prescribes aspirins for both headaches and hernia. The conditionalities the Fund has demanded and got from Indonesia, Thailand and Korea could actually make it harderfor them to rebound. Their agony will in all likelihood be prolonged.