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

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (6300)	9/9/1998 9:12:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 9980

Mike, In my experience it is quite common for recession to be almost invisible at the street level in Asia. There are a number of reasons for this. First, many of these countries have large underground economies, which are not reflected in official numbers and are far less responsive to policy moves (they are in fact created to insulate against policy moves, which are often capricious). Second, the division between the underground and above-ground economies is in many cases almost complete. The Philippine stock market can take a total crash, and the man in the street will hardly be aware of it. Third, even when pain and dislocation are very real, an outsider can look directly at it and see no hint of it, until it blows up in his face. Which it occasionally does. Steve

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (6300)	9/10/1998 8:53:00 AM
From: Stitch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

MikeM; <<How about if you compare what you see, feel, and hear today, to June of 1997. What is that comparison like?>> I guess the more visible things are less crowded bars and shopping malls. People clearly have pulled in their horns on spending. There have been a couple of plant closures that I know of, perhaps more. There has also been the visible return of foreign workers. But stores are still chock full of merchandise and their have been no visible shortages. Traffic still seems as crowded as ever. The preponderance of small talk has been along the lines of "yea, business is down, isn't it awful". There was one case of a candy factory owner who was losing his business and committed suicide with his whole family. But otherwise things have been relatively normal. The figures say that there is a deep recession underway however. Best, Stitch