by Walden Bello, the Nation Newspaper, 4 December, 1997, Bangkok, Thailand The dependency on foreign capital to bring about rapid industrialisation has resulted in profligate spending in Southeast Asia, says Walden Bello in the...
Read Moreby Walden Bello, in The Nation Newspaper, 3 December, 1997, Bangkok, Thailand The bane of Southeast Asian tiger economies is due to their rapid industrialisation strategy which is highly dependent on foreign capital, argues...
Read MoreEasy Money on Silom Street: Or How Bangkok’s Financial Yuppies (with Some Help from Their Foreign Buddies) Brought Down the Economy by Walden Bello published by Business World, Manila, Philippines, November 1997 The Thai...
Read MoreBy Ehito Kimura Over thirty events directly related to the People’s Summit on APEC took place the week of November 17-24. Activities ranged from conferences, workshops, plenaries, press briefings, films, rallies, and mock...
Read MoreBy Walden Bello The fifth summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) held in Vancouver in the last week of November was marked by a remarkable reversal of roles from previous meetings. During the past three summits,...
Read MoreWalden Bello Perhaps an even bigger surprise than the collapse of the economies of Southeast Asia has been the implosion of the Korean economy. The coming of the IMF has only triggered an even greater loss of confidence with the...
Read Moreby Walden Bello* “Turmoil” has been the operative word used to describe the economic situation in Southeast Asia since the de facto devaluation of the Thai baht on July 2, 1997. By late October, when this report was...
Read MoreBy Nicola Bullard LEADERS at the recent G-15 meeting in Kuala Lumpur made it clear that the Multilateral Agreement on Investment being negotiated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and which many see...
Read MoreBy Ehito Kimura This week, eighteen heads of state (or near heads of state) from the Asia Pacific will gather amid much pomp and circumstance to discuss the exciting topic of regional economic cooperation. Asia Pacific Economic...
Read Moreby Walden Bello* (This paper was originally prepared for the Hivos Partner Consulation, Trivandrum, Kerala, India, September 1-3, 1997.) Overviews are always broad-strokes affairs that inevitably miss many key dimensions,...
Read Moreby Nicola Bullard* Why is no-one saying the truth? Why is no-one admitting that Thailand’s economic crisis is the predictable consequence of a development model which is deeply flawed, profoundly unfair in its distribution...
Read MoreBy Jomo K.S.* After nearly three years of unprecedented popularity at home, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad has seen his reputation take a beating in the business community. This is because of rhetoric that in the past...
Read Moreby Kamal Malhotra* The 1997 World Bank/ IMF Annual Meetings in Hong Kong were carefully planned well in advance to be a celebration of both first (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) and second generation( Thailand,...
Read Moreby Walden Bello* The last time the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was active in Thailand was in the mid-1980’s, when the country was mired in a recession caused by the conjunction of the rising price of oil, plunging...
Read Moreby Walden Bello* Even experienced observers were surprised by the Big Bang that marked the restructuring of Thailand’s economy under the supervision of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In return for an IMF bail-out,...
Read Moreby Walden Bello* The Thai government’s closing of 42 finance companies, in addition to the 16 it shut down in June, to convince the International Monetary Fund that it is finally serious about coming to grips with the...
Read Moreby Walden Bello* Does the currency crisis in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines spell the end of the Southeast Asian model of development? In contrast to the path followed by the “newly industrialising...
Read Moreby Walden Bello* The peso has stabilized. The economy is back on course. The trade deficit is under control, and the projected GDP growth rate of 7 per cent will be achieved. People in the Philippines are today being bombarded...
Read Moreby Walden Bello* Like the European Union, Asean faces the choice of either “enlarging” or “deepening.” And the choice it makes will have major consequences on the prospects of two of its key projects, the...
Read Moreby Walden Bello* Gloom is the dominant mood in Japan these days. The nation’s spirit appears to be sinking along with its currency, which recently dropped to as low as 120 to the dollar from a high of less than 80 yen less...
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