Destructive Creativity of Wall Street and the East Asian Response

The following sections are included:

• Preface

• Contents

The following sections are included:

• No Two Financial Crises are the Same

• What is this book about?

The following sections are included:

• Importance of Banks and Financial Companies

• The Dawn of Deregulation

In the midst of deepening crises in the world's major financial markets, some say we are hearing echoes of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The D-word has occurred with increasing frequency in the media. Even the previous US President George W. Bush commented at the G20 financial summit in November 2008 that it was conceivable that the US could suffer a depression worse than the Great Depression…

The following sections are included:

• Securitization and How It Can Go Wrong

• Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction

• Financial Excesses

The following sections are included:

• A Robust and Sound Financial Sub-System

• Payment System Consisting of Narrow Banks

• Insurance Companies and Commercial Banks

• Other Financial Firms

• Key Features of the Proposed Financial Architecture

• Financial Infrastructure

The following sections are included:

• Higher Level of Systemic Risk

• Independent Rating Agencies

• Contagion and Currency Control

• Offshore Banking

• Trust and Confidence

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established as part of the Bretton Woods institutions designed at the end of the World War II to deal with global economic matters. The other two were the World Bank and General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT). Between them, they aim to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty. More specifically, the explicit raison d'être of the IMF is to provide financial assistance to countries that suffer serious balance-of-payment difficulties. It is interesting to note that the Fund behaves like an onlooker in the current crisis (at least until mid-October 2008), unlike that overworked participant in the Asian financial crisis…

The following sections are included:

• The Pros and Cons of Regulation

• Limits of Regulation

The following sections are included:

• Being Boring Still Pays

• The Question of Remuneration

• Two Discussion Points

The following sections are included:

• A Core Idea of Keynesian Economics

• Asset Inflation and Deflation

• Problems of Implementation

The following sections are included:

• Economic Equity and Social Safety Net

• Economic Realism and Political Parochialism

• Big Government and Recession

• Reflections on Information Economy

• Two Opposed Ideas in the Mind at the Same Time

The following sections are included:

• Background

• General Weaknesses of the East Asian Economies

• Why Did It Happen?

The following sections are included:

• The Positives

The following sections are included:

• The Negatives

The following sections are included:

• A Changed Environment

The following sections are included:

• Japanese Reforms

• Chinese Reforms

• Korean Reforms

• Other East Asian Reforms
  • Vietnam
  • Korea

• Afternote

The following sections are included:

• Global Financial Crisis Arrives in 2008

The following sections are included:

• What is the Impact on Major Southeast Asian Economies?
  • Indonesia
  • Malaysia
  • Philippines
  • Thailand
  • Japan

• How is Southeast Asia Coping with the Crisis?
  • Indonesia's management of the crisis
  • Malaysia's management of the crisis
  • Philippines' management of the crisis

The following sections are included:

• East Asia to the Rescue?

• Governments to the Rescue

• Boosting Domestic Consumption

• Looking Beyond the Crisis

The following sections are included:

• Subregional Strategies to Cope with Financial Crisis

• Actors in East and South Asia Outside ASEAN
  • How are they plugging into ASEAN's regionalism initiatives?
  • FTA with India — finance on the agenda

The following sections are included:

• ASEAN Economic Community

• Regional Currency
  • Regional bond market

• Establishing a Crisis Fund

In the 1990s when Southeast Asia was infected by a bout of the 1997 Asian financial crisis which incapacitated most of the Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) (except Hong Kong which was single-handedly kept afloat by China) and almost all of the third-tier geese (particularly Thailand and Indonesia which are still recovering from it while Malaysia inoculated itself with a currency peg). But it left the fourth-tier (former socialist CMLV states) relatively untouched and most importantly, the biggest of the fourth-tier member, China, superpumped its economic drive to eventually become the world's latest trillion dollar economy a decade after the financial crisis…

The following sections are included:

• EPILOGUE 1 What Now?
  • Private Sector Involvement
  • The Obama Factor
  • Unity in Adversity
  • APEC
  • G-20

• EPILOGUE 2 Coping with Challenges
  • Coping Strategies in East Asia
  • Weak Points of Asia
    • Challenges in Vietnam
    • Challenges in Japan
    • Challenges in China

• APPENDIX Developing an East Asian Business Ethos by Ho Kwon Ping, 30 September 2008

• Notes

• Bibliography
  • Books
  • Articles/Speeches
  • Newspaper/Magazine Articles
  • Websites

• Index

• About the Authors