Meltdown: Asia's Boom, Bust, and Beyond

Abstract

On July 2, 1997, Thailand made a decision to devalue the baht. At first, the move seemed merely another in the ceaseless cat-and-mouse game between bankers and speculators in exotic currencies. Yet the event would trigger a financial earthquake to shake a continentz In just over a year, the once wondrous Asian economy would lie in ruins. Today the aftershocks ripple from Sao Paolo to the Silicon Valley. How could a region that had been the most dynamic growth zone for a decade self-destruct seemingly overnight?Senior specialists at Business Week who have covered Asia's economy from boom to bust to the wrenching aftermath, Mark Clifford and Pete Engardio vividly tell the story of this debacle. Drawing on interviews with the region's leading politicians, industrialists, and technocrats, the authors explore the causes and implications of the most severe financial collapse since the Great Depression. The Asian economic miracle was not a mirage. The continent's development strategies went terribly wrong due to a tendency to carry initiatives to wild excess, compounded by problems hidden by authoritarian political systems. Can Asia's economies get back on the growth track? What safeguards might keep other developing countries from crashing? Does the global financial system need urgent, basic reform? Meltdown confronts these critical questions and more for compelling reading.