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To: Mohan Marette who wrote (81137)	11/18/1998 3:14:00 PM
From: BGR	Respond to of 176387

Mohan, I don't think that it is exactly a 'blame the foreigners' case. The S.E. Asian countries were responsible for accepting short-term cash and investing that in long term projects, which proved disastrous. They deserve blame for that. But so do the investors. It is not quite true that their financial systems were not transparent - rather they followed different accounting standards which fewer people complained about when the going was good. Their accounting standards and corporate financing policies in general and high debt-to-equity ratios in particular were always quite clear. And by any standards the IMF blundered when it focussed on short-term liquidity at the expense of long-term growth and ended up detoriating short-term liquidity. As for complete and full adoption of Western style capitalism w/o structural changes, surely that never works. The countries are now moving away from the adoption, while the Western lenders would prefer that they accept structural changes. Probably both are going to result in improving the economies of the countries, but given the social dynamics the former is more feasible that the later IMO. Hence I am very optimistic of a S.E. Asian recovery. -Apratim.

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (81137)	11/18/1998 5:03:00 PM
From: Chuzzlewit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Mohan, I think you are exactly on target. Many believe that much of the money "earned" by tiger companies was in actuality dervided from differential lending rates and supported currencies like the baht. So you could borrow dollars and lend bhat. It goes to hell when the bhat nosedives and you don't have the wherewithall to repay the loan. Your business goes bankrupt, and lo and behold! it turns out that your profits were derived entirely from currency arbitrage. And this system only works because of cronyism between the government (who supported the currency), the banking system (who knew it was a house of cards), and the businesses (who used the "business" as a shell for currency trading). TTFN, CTC