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and interactive that our current tools and institutional structure to deal with critical episodes are completely outdated.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.

This volume focuses on the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the 2008 financial crisis that originated in the United States. How have these crises affected Asia? How has Asia coped? What has been the impact of the crises on ordinary people? Between the covers of this book are theoretical perspectives on financial crises, followed by specific studies on the crises' impact on Filipino overseas workers and the responses of families with overseas workers in Paete, Laguna; the effects of the crises on the Indonesian pirates; the connection of an economic framework between Taiwan and China to the financial crisis; and the impact and responses of business firms in selected countries in ASEA + 3.

Two Crises, Different Outcomes examines East Asian policy reactions to the two major crises of the last fifteen years: the global financial crisis of 2008–9 and the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98. The calamity of the late 1990s saw a massive meltdown concentrated in East Asia. In stark contrast, East Asia avoided the worst effects of the Lehman Brothers collapse, incurring relatively little damage when compared to the financial devastation unleashed on North America and Europe. Much had changed across the intervening decade, not least that China rather than Japan had become the locomotive of regional growth, and that the East Asian economies had taken numerous steps to buffer their financial structures and regulatory regimes. This time Asia avoided disaster; it bounced back quickly after the initial hit and has been growing in a resilient fashion ever since. The authors of this book explain how the earlier financial crisis affected Asian economies, why government reactions differed so widely during that crisis, and how Asian economies weathered the Great Recession. Drawing on a mixture of single-country expertise and comparative analysis, they conclude by assessing the long-term prospects that Asian countries will continue their recent success.

The current global financial turmoil, triggered by the US subprime crisis, has spread quickly and resulted in the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s. As the world's third largest economy and the second largest trading nation, China is inevitably affected seriously. How China responds to the crisis and how effective its measures are in sustaining a healthy growth will have important implications, both domestically and internationally.The chapters in this volume are divided into five sections. Section one examines the overall impact of the global economic crisis and the responses of the Chinese government. Section two studies the regional aspect of the economy affected by the crisis. Section three explores such economies of the Mainland's southern neighbors as Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and the prospect of China's trade. Section four surveys the impact on the ideological and social aspects of the country. Section five concludes with an assessment of China's external policies. The volume offers a comprehensive and in-depth assessment of the impact of the crisis and the measures of the Chinese government to overcome the difficulties.

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.

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.