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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rational who wrote (600)	1/8/1998 6:30:00 PM
From: Rational	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9980

Good news about Asia: yen/US$ is up .64% at 131.8 yen/US$ and, more importantly, rupiah was down another 20% at 11500/$ but is back up unchanged at previous close of 9651/US$. We still have the whole night! <G> Sankar

To: Rational who wrote (600)	1/8/1998 7:22:00 PM
From: Esvida	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

Sankar, I'm depressed reading your post. It vaguely reminds me of the operating principles of the old Communist, which chose to impoverished the general population for the sake of fairness. Their societies were extremely fair in terms of equality of incomes since most had none. Let's not confuse the IMF's actions with the mess in Asia. If you want to play the blame game, let's divide the game into stages. What caused the Asian mess to begin with? The issues with IMF are just too complex and I've not been able to sort it out in my mind, but regarding Mr Stigliz's argument why the US rejects balanced-budget and then ignores that in Asia I have to say that it depends on debt service ability. One day, if and when the US people manage to mess up the country to the point where no one want to own Treasury bonds, I'm certain that the US will face the same issues and advices and will probably have to swallow the same bitter medicine. Do you remember that no more than 10 years ago, President Bush was lectured on his needs to take care of the twin deficits and especially the fiscal deficit? Imagin that if instead of rebounding from that low the US continued to decline to need IMF assistance, what would the IMF prescribe for the US? I totally agree with the adage "There is a Sanskrit adage that says the happiest person is he who stays within his own means" and I think it is a universal adage. Ben Franklin taught the same thing not too long ago and his books are still in print. What has been changed in that adage is the meaning of the word means. In the past or in less developed countries today where income predictability is low, means implies what one has already produced or earned. In modern and more developed economies, it implies one's income capacity. I still live according to this adage, but I do have a 30-year mortgage. How do you explain that? Why did I not wait until the day I had enough cash to pay for my house out right before buying one? You're probably doing the same thing and so are many other people on this thread. I sincerely hope that you agree with me that if one makes a mistake, one has a few choices in facing it. The easy one (and probably most expensive one) is to blame someone else and continue to live with it and the tough one (and least expensive one) is to accept one's responsiblity, pay for it, learn from it, move on and do the best to assure that the same mistake will not be made again. Sincerely depressed, -Al

To: Rational who wrote (600)	1/8/1998 8:02:00 PM
From: Jyoti sharma	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9980

Sankar, Whenever I read your post it appears I am taking a graduate course in finance. I always learn something new. Hopefully one day I will eventually learn how high finance works . On India and China , I also feel they will emerge financially stronger relative to other their South asian brethren at least in the short term. Long term I am not so sure. Countries going to IIMF for bailout will learn from their humiliating experience and may emerge stronger eventually. Even Indonesia after Suharto may get its act together. Indonesia has a large population base and lot's of atural resources. Your statement: "Unfortunately, the IMF policy appears aimed at getting back the western loans to SE Asia while squeezing the asset values in these countries so hard that the same capital can get back to own those assets at bargain prices." You are probably right again. My thinking is what's wrong with making these countries pay for their misdeeds. They will learn some humility and stop looking down at USA. At Telecom 95 in Geneva I had an opportunity to meet a large number of Govt.delegates from SE Asia , found most of them arrogant brimming with over confidence and grandiose telecom infrastructure plans. Perhps the current problems will make them think of future in more realistic terms. . Now the big question why debt moratorium is better than IMF terms for Indonesia. My limited understanding is that the debt moratorium will bring all import and export activity to halt forcing transactions to be done on all cash or barter basis. What happens if Indonesia defaults and the Asian banks have to write off their loans making situation in Korea and Japan a lot worse? Regards and best wishes for the new year. Jyoti

To: Rational who wrote (600)	1/9/1998 9:39:00 AM
From: Worswick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

One of these days I will take you up on the idea "Western capital" caused the crisis in SE Asia. Are Japan and Korea part of this "Western capital"? I intend to address Sankar in some future post the idea that China and India are "smart" in their monetary policies. You keep repeating this. In the meantime I'd like you to go to Poona and drive to Bombay... the width of that road - an artery literally 25 feet wide - supplies a metropolitan complex of twenty million people. I have seen wrecks on this road which are unimaginable.