The Financial Crises in Russia and East Asia: How the World Bank can Help.

1 - Overview of Asian financial crisis

On July 2, 1997, the Government of Thailand abandoned its efforts to maintain a fixed- exchange rate – the Baht had been pegged to a basket of currencies dominated by the U.S. dollar – and allowed the Baht to float. This Baht quickly depreciated, falling 18% on the first day alone. The collapse of the Thai Baht was followed by speculative attacks on other countries’ currencies (including the Indonesian Rupiah, the Malaysia Ringitt, the Philippine Peso, and the Korean Won) and to a further round of forced devaluations. The collapse of fixed exchange rates was accompanied by a series of more general financial sector crises in several of these countries. Although the precise details vary, the immediate cause appears to be a mismatch between assets and liabilities in the corporate and banking sectors (in both currency and term length) and a sharp decline in asset values. These immediate problems were exacerbated by general financial sector weakness due to inadequate supervision and rampant insider lending.

In many ways the crises in Asia were somewhat different than previously observed exchange rate crises. Corsetti, Pesenti and Roubini (1998) note that several of the usual indicators of a pending financial crisis – slow growth, large fiscal deficits, high rates of inflation and low savings and investment rates – were not observed in these countries prior to the crises. This led several observers to suggest that the crises were the result of self-fulfilling prophecies (i.e., the belief that the currency might be devalued led to speculative attacks on the currency which then forced the governments to devalue the currency even though fundamentals remained strong). However, many observers suggested, both before and (more often)