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To: Broken_Clock who wrote (283)	5/15/1998 10:04:00 PM
From: Thean	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14427

Papaya, I think you feel the heat from Asia a lot closer to home than me because I'm in Ohio of all places. I have no theory about the Chinese Renminbi devaluation but that one has been talked about ever since the first sign of Asian problem. This is not easy to gauge from outside China. The chinese situation is a little special because the US is their #1 customer from hand phone to microchip to shoes. As long as every investors in the US is pumping more money into the market and make more money (at least they hope) the buying power in this country is not going to dry up overnight. As I said earlier to LT, every single Asian country has to be analyzed differently and there is no generalization to be made. However, one can make a general perception - that Asia is not the place to invest in currently because the bottom is likely not reached yet. From talking to folks at home (Malaysia) I know money flow is really tight. If one is in business (every one of my high school friends is) then the situation is bad because there is no borrowing power nor money center banks to loan money to you. The current business has no hope for expansion and from operational standpoint it becomes a harsh, painful wait-and-see situation where business plan cannot get executed. Most people are strategizing defensive moves rather than offensive (expansion) moves. The example of MIND not able to collect debt in time in their Singapore operation is just a classic case. People want to be in business and if you examine their accounting book you will find they have more than enough cashflow to pay you but they are purposely not paying you on time. This is the social attitude there - if the general economy is bad, I'm going to safeguard whatever I have first and pay debt later. In this country this is where the lawyer comes in. But in most of Asia this is part of the business reality. There is really no fear of damaging one's own business reputation because everyone in the same business is behaving just the same. In short, people will be fine because people there know how to be thrifty and safeguard what they have. However, governments are in trouble because the people are pointing fingers at them for being at least partially responsible for the economic woes and the government is simply paralized from their ambitious infrastructure spendings. The investment opportunity will be there but I'm afraid the turnaround will not happen in 1998. As far as anti-American sentiment goes - this one for sure. American investment funds (offshore types) are the reasons for the rise of their markets in recent past as well as their collapse when the American money was pulled out. The citizens of these countries (many are stock market speculators there because gambling is in the gene) realized what happened, although after the fact. Well, when things do not go well, guess what - there are always plenty of fingers to point. Don't you think?