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

To: Jack Clarke who wrote (2151)	2/14/1998 3:57:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9980

Jack: Before we write to the Congressmen and Senators,let us think about the consequences for a minute. With all its shortcomings if IMF and others won't help SEA countries now,it is going to hurt the little guys as much as the big guys. The last I heard investments in equities by Americans (mostly the little guys-I guess that is you and I,eh?) now stands at an all time high,taking over real estate for the first time in history as the biggest asset category owned by Americans directly or through IRAs. So it is like this, we are damned if we do,and we are damned if we don't,oh wait a minute... is that right? Oh well something like that,anyway you get the idea,don't you?

To: Jack Clarke who wrote (2151)	2/16/1998 11:01:00 AM
From: Worswick	Respond to of 9980

Jack and Mohan while it is easy to agree with the Wall Street Journal article I had this weird since of deja vu all over again as Yogi Berra said. Let me take you back a bit if I may. Walter Wriston cratered CitiBank with sovereign loans in the 80's and he reduced a grat American institution literally to bankruptcy (rescued only through the good offices of George Schultz through a Saudi connection I believe....the Good Prince Walid, the Price of Euro Disney came up with $450 million plus for 10% of CitiBank). Next, we come to William Simon an absolute sleazeball of the worst, the absolute worst odor. Finally, we have George Schultz, an honest man who want's to keep his directorships on various boards: his retirement "nest egg" after a life of work. The sponsorship of these ideas in the WSJ trashing Soros, whom I believe by the way has made the only coherent statements pertaining to the solution of "the Asian crisis", is absolutely disingenuous given the sponsorship of this article and the ideas of these three economic "thinkers". Simon, Wriston and Schultz promote nothing. They suggest nothing. All they do is poorly describe the situation and the problem in Asia in code words and then say, "The IMF solution will not work so don't back it." I know the IMF solution won't work and isn't working, however they suggest no matrix that will work. Geroge Soros has enunciated perhaps one of the few plans that will work given the dynamics of a capitalist system that one could almost describe as a "centrally controlled capitalist system" . So where do we go from here, at that where are we? I am not really a big fan of Mr. Reagan who piled $4 trillion of debt that the government acknowledges into the American economy. Since Reagan's term of President of the US the world has chugged along very nicely - thank you- since Mr. Volker and the President started printing money. Personally, I think it is horrible this massive accumulation of debt. And I do think there will come in the future terrible day of reckoning when all this probably $12 plus of on book and off book debt is counted up. However, one can't argue with 15 years of fat when I consider where we were in the 1970's; and, at that. where we were in 1982 and headed down, again, into the sheep dip for the third or fourth time. Government policy saved us and probably the world. We just haven't yet paid the bill. Moving ahead when I hear things like, "Governments and politically directed institutions like the IMF have shown time and again that they are incapable of making these kinds of decisions without creating the kinds of crises we are now facing in Asia" I question first who is writing this sort of idea? Schultz, Wriston and Simon. Then, whether these statements are actually true. One can throw out the IMF but don't include Soros's ideas with the IMF and their work. His ideas were promulgated as an answer to the situation the IMF and developed (not developing) nations got themselves into. We are still trying to work out the answer. In my humble opinion if it is left to the market to "mark to market" Asia - on those tens of thousands of computer terminals mentioned by this scribbling, unholy trinity - then our generation and the next are doomed to wars without end, to poverty and the next plagues to raddle mankind. Unfortunately, from a personal bias of "less government is the best government" I have to say that only government with a strong carnivorous agenda can grapple with this problem of extreme Asian deflation. Why? And to what result? It is my opinion that if Asia disappears in a deflationary black hole we will soon be dragged down into the pit ourselves. If it is left to traders to "mark to market" Asia god help us all. Every one of us. We will get to pay individually and collectively in the United States our own $12 trillion debt PLUS that is hiding in the sewers like some kind of monster waiting to gasp fresh air. If we do not vigorously confront the beast in Asia then he will enter every bank, every apartment, every house in the West. There will be no place that is safe. No hiding.