SE Asian crisis
It would seem safe to say that nobody expected anything like the 1997-98 crisis in Asia: suddenly the 'Asian miracle' became the 'Asian crisis'. Although, there were a few pessimists who had noted that the current account deficits were as high as or higher than those of Latin America in 1994. No-one expected more than a conventional currency crisis followed by at most a modest downturn. As soon as the crisis hit in mid-1997, the IMF laid the blame on the shortcomings of the East Asian financial markets [1]. The basic diagnosis was that the crisis reflected structural and policy in the countries of the region. Fundamental imbalances because their financial systems were riddled by insider dealing, corruption, and weak corporate governance, which in turn, had led to inefficient investment spending and had weakened the stability of the banking system. Existing models of currency crisis were powerless to explain what happened. This was not a 'first generation' currency crisis [2] brought about by excess budget deficits. Nor was the crisis caused by a conflict between the need to defend a fixed exchange rate and the expansion needed to remove high unemployment. To understand what happened to Asia, a new 'th
The adverse consequences of these distortions were magnified by the process of capital account liberalization and financial market deregulation in the region during the 1990's. The primary implication of moral hazard is that an adverse shock to profitability does not induce financial intermediaries to be more cautious in lending and to follow financial strategies that would reduce the overall riskiness of their portfolios. This abrupt reversal of flows leads to financial embarrassment [3], as loans fall into default or are pushed to the brink of default. Even in the absence of 'bail-out' promises, production plans and strategies of the corporate sector largely overlooked costs and riskiness of the underlying projects. Lax supervision and weak supervision; low capital adequacy ratios; insufficient expertise in the regulatory institutions; distorted incentives for project selection; corrupt lending; non-market credit allocation. Competitive pressures were enhanced by the increasing weight of China in total export from the region. While borrowing from abroad to finance domestic investment could actually be the optimal course of action for undercapitalized economies with good investment opportunities- the evidence for the Asian countries in the mid-1990s was that the profitability of new projects was low. abrupt changes in international market conditions that affect the ability of debtors to repay outstanding loans, such as shifts in interest rates, commodity prices, or trade condition, and2. Such pressures and beliefs represented the sustained process of capital accumulation, resulting in persistent and sizeable current account deficits. The sharp appreciation of the US dollar relative to the Japanese yen and European currencies since the second half of 1995 led to deteriorating cost competitiveness in most Asian currencies whose currencies where pegged to the dollar. This same goal aimed exchange rate policies at reducing the volatility of the domestic currency in terms of the US dollar, thus lowering the risk of premium on dollar-denominated debt. With governments that appeared willing to intervene in favor of troubled firms, markets operated under the impression that the return was somewhat insured against adverse shocks. The main blame for the crisis can almost be blamed exclusively on the structural distortions in the financial and banking sectors. None of the East Asian countries was in the aftermath of an anti-inflammation program. Also, a number of country specific and global shocks contributed to severely deteriorate the economic outlook in the Asian region, intensifying the distortions already in place.
Common topics in this essay:
East Asian,
Indonesia Thailand,
Latin America,
,
asian countries,
east asian,
currency crisis,
moral hazard,
corporate financial,
capital inflows,
pushed brink default,
corporate financial sectors,
current account,
exchange rate,
current account deficits,
financial crisis,
outstanding loans,
|