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To: yard_man who wrote (2436)	6/20/1998 8:03:00 PM
From: Joseph G.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86076

Before they recover, they will have to stop looking for scapegoats, and get to work instead. From last Economist: <<Asia's financial turmoil Whodunit? HIDDEN AGENDA: IN THE EYES OF THE TIGER. By Lim Kok Wing, Robert Ho You Chai and Yee Mee Fah. Limkokwing Integrated; 128 pages; Malaysian ringgit 20. ASIA FALLING? By Callum Henderson. McGraw-Hill; 314 pages; Malaysian ringgit 38.50 and $24.95. ASIA UNDER SIEGE: HOW THE ASIAN MIRACLE WENT WRONG. By Ranjit Gill. Epic Management Services; 196 pages; Malaysian ringgit 25.90 IN RECENT months this reviewer has heard a Singaporean banker, a Bangkok taxi driver and a Jakarta student (among others) argue that Asia's economic troubles are a consequence of a deliberate American policy to cut the continent (and especially China) down to size. Conspiracy theories abound as an explanation for the region's woes, and they are reflected in a crop of instant books that have appeared recently in South-East Asia. Such theories have a perennial appeal: they can explain the incomprehensible; empower the powerless with a sense of their own slighted virtue; and provide that most valuable of creatures, a scapegoat. All too often, their only serious flaw is their sheer implausibility. Take, for example, the explanation that Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, offered last summer for South-East Asia's currency crisis. He blamed a financial speculator. George Soros, he suggested, had decided to wreak revenge for the admission of the nasty Myanmar junta into the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). This was a first-class conspiracy theory. It combined anger at the power of western capital with suspicion of the West's political agenda, embodied in Mr Soros's "Open Society" foundation, which has given financial support to some exiled Myanmar dissidents. These days, Mr Mahathir is less specific. "It is not important whether there is a conspiracy or not," he says in an interview with the authors of "Hidden Agenda", the liveliest (and also the silliest) of the recent instant books. The authors seem to disagree. They see conspiracy everywhere: in the western media, of course, which are "a force for evil . . . a force to destroy everything that the East stands for"; and in Hollywood too. Did audiences at "Disclosure", for instance, not realise that the film's true purpose was to undermine Malaysia (by showing it producing dusty microchips)? Why is the West so purposely malicious? "Hidden Agenda" never really explains. Perhaps because precise accusations are self-evidently preposterous, it resorts to vague insinuations about "hidden forces". It is not the authors' intention, they say, to "play Sherlock Holmes in dusting for fingerprints in order to catch the culprit". The reader, faced with a crime of such enormity, may feel cheated that the guilty party is never unmasked. Westerners tend to have more sympathy for such theories when they live in Asia. Callum Henderson, for example, in his more conventional account of the turmoil, "Asia Falling?", points out that France, Germany and Britain have in recent years all been guilty of hysterical outbursts at times of currency turbulence, so the howls of anguish from the region are not surprising. Mr Henderson is a currency analyst, and well placed to explain how the war looked from the other side of the trenches. He tells a grippingtale-a reminder that life spent glaring at numbers on a computer terminal is not all dull. He debunks key tenets of the conspiracy theory-especially that the crash was caused entirely by the capricious or malicious withdrawal of foreign capital. In most of the damaged countries the flight of local money and attempts to hedge foreign-currency exposure (by locals and foreigners alike) also played a big role. Like the inferior "Asia Under Siege", a scissors-and-paste job based largely on press reports, "Asia Falling?" is unlikely to soothe the conspiracy theorists. Its examination of the global economic forces, domestic policy mistakes and market panics behind the slump is interesting and sensible. But many in the region would say that none of this fully explains how things could have gone wrong in such a sudden, unforeseen and devastating way. In the few months since these books were written, the regional gloom has darkened. Millions of jobs have been lost, savings wiped out and dreams of prosperity shattered. So far, many have blamed their own governments. But as misery intensifies, so will the temptation for local politicians to blame foreigners. Western governments which argue that the malaise is largely the result of misguided economic policies, and that it will go away if the proper, distasteful medicine is taken, may well be correct. But such self-righteousness only increases the likelihood of a nationalist backlash, which could take some very vicious forms. On the bookstall in Kuala Lumpur where these titles were purchased, another prominently displayed volume was Henry Ford's 1920s contribution to the conspiracy genre: "The International Jew". >>

To: yard_man who wrote (2436)	6/20/1998 8:32:00 PM
From: Joseph G.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86076

<<the optimum time to buy SEA. >> I'd be a little more careful. After WWI many East and central European markets never came back, also LatAm was busted for next 70 years, more or less. After WWII, whatever you invested in Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Checkoslovakia is gone forever. Whatever you invested in Austria, Spain, Portugal and Italy has not kept up with inflation. Apparently, Indian market is down since it's 1940 peak. It may be more prudent to play Australia, NZ, Chile for SEA, indirectly.