The Asian Financial Crisis and Thailand: Catalyst for Change...or More of The Same?

These effective strategies helped Hong Kong overcome the financial crisis. All these facts fully demonstrated that China is a responsible big country. After the Asia financial crisis, the importance of China's economy has been brought into focus; China's neighboring countries have begun to recognize the influence of the Renminbi.

The economic boom of 1977 to 1997 had a dramatic impact on Thailand’s northern villages. While the center of the country, Bangkok, was rapidly industrializing, the north fell behind. Due to a lack of income and resources, the north had to watch the

The early 1990s exhibited a boom in many economies throughout the world due to factors such as globalization and other trade liberalization practices, but this boom was quickly halted in the latter half of the decade when bad investments nearly sent the entire world into economic turmoil. With the introduction of free trade practices such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, the economies of many of the worlds “developing countries” skyrocketed due to an influx of foreign investment. At, first this exponential boom in small countries with emerging economies seemed like it would never end. However, this all changed when investors “caught wind” that these developing countries did not have the means to keep up with the massive inflow of investments. This led to what we know refer to today as the Asian Financial Credit Crisis. In order to understand how to prevent such a disaster from happening again, we must first examine how exactly this event was triggered, and what should have been done differently.

The recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) initially began with the collapse of credits and financial markets, which caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US in 2007. The sub-prime mortgages were given to high-risk lenders (with bad credit history) who were in danger of defaulting, which eventually caused a global credit crunch, where the banks were unwilling to lend to each other. In October 2008, the collapse of the major financial institutions and the crash of stock markets marked the peak of this global economic slowdown (Euromonitor International, 2008).

The worldwide impact of the recent financial crisis outlines the importance of having a decent understanding of crises. Latest episode has definitely showed that status of economic as well as the financial performance is greatly affected by financial turmoil. During the crisis, world stock markets have been collapsed, largest financial institutions have been bought out or fallen, and the wealthiest nations like UAE, UK of USA had to stand up and aid their financial systems as well as the economic ones. World economic activity was a common topic in the newspapers for many years after it has occurred. “The present financial crisis is a culmination of many systematic factors. The economic crisis has made us to believe that world

In an attempt to blame the crisis solely on the affected countries, intellectual "flip-flops" were made. Features that had been toasted as strengths were overnight concerted into evils. For example, the countries had been praised (indeed, over-praised) for having strong linkages between the public and private sectors. Today, that is totally condemned as the fatal flaw of crony capitalism. As an alternative to mainly blaming the countries, there rapidly developed another view of how the crisis emerged and spread. This view put the blame on the developments of the global financial system, with the combination of the following features:

The current economic crisis has a number of dimensions that are crucial. During this time there was a moment to represent break up to form interlocking arrangements to govern the world economy. There were several attempts to resolve the crises that arose from the central contradiction. This was within capitalism between the creation of profits and the realization of those profits in the sphere of production, circulation and exchange. These crises have led to a build-up of debts for both corporate and household debt. The crises also destabilized the returns of the international monetary resulting in trading deficit even with the most powerful nations. The crises also affected the low commodities prices ecologically. In an attempt to maintain these crises through strategic management policy they were a drastic change that affected the economy in a more severe manner in 2008. This was far the worse economy crises that affected many countries seeking for survival tactics. For China, it was a different case as it shows a remarkable growth in its economy despite the crises that threatened the economy globally.

In 1997, there occurred certain shifts in expectations from the market. The regional contagion and confidence led to the East Asian financial turmoil. In 1990s, it had been reported that the microeconomic and macroeconomic businesses were not performing as expected. The local and international investors had not held enough grips into the looming financial challenges to be expected by the financial fragments. These investors panicked and participated in fraudulent and faulty approaches and policies of operation in the market through the influence of the International Monetary Fund together with the global financial body. The financial policies, which were laid by the small businesses within the region, had failed to bring enough financial performance in the local and international market. For instance, reports claim that these businesses were not large enough to hold immense support to the structure of the economy in the region. With time, the stability of the financial structure was brought to question. This was later contributed by the influences obtained from the international financial bodies and the International Monetary Fund committee (Corsetti, Pesenti, & Roubini, 1999, p.305-6).

This resulted in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank having to assist developing countries and institute economic reform. This series of events has occurred at least two times in history; during the 1970s in Latin America and during the 1990s in Asia. Following this information, a pattern becomes apparent, consisting of a three-phase cycle of over-borrowing, crisis, and adjustment (Oatley p. 298). However if global debt continues to rise to astronomical amounts, economic “bailouts” after financial crisis has occurred will be eventually no longer be a viable option.

Southeast Asia has gone through large changes in its social landscapes during the late twentieth centuries that resulted from globalization, urbanization and authoritarian regimes. Particularly in the last three decades of the twentieth century, Thailand has been undergoing radical social and economic changes in which its practices and politics has transformed its social and cultural realities. Increasingly influenced by globalized economic and social institutions, Thailand has come to confront crises that made her people insecure in the present and anxious about the future.

The financial crisis in many countries in Asia in 1997-1998 was an unexpected event. It was mainly because most of the Asian countries had been enjoying economic growth prior to the crisis. The crisis itself started with the devaluation of Thailand’s Baht in July 1997. The Thailand government decided to float its currency in order to defend the Baht against speculative attack, despite its fixed exchange rate system. This decision was apparently the beginning of the economic downturn of many Asian countries, such as Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Indonesia. Before the crisis, Indonesia’s economy was growing rapidly; having a low inflation and a well-maintained current account deficit. However, Indonesia surprisingly became the country that was affected the most by the crisis. This paper aims to examine the effects of the Asian financial crisis in 1997-1998 to Indonesian economy and how it could happen.

One of the most important lessons from the Asian crisis is that it is prudent and necessary for developing countries to have measures that reduce its exposure to the risks of globalization and thus place limits on its degree of financial liberalizations. In a globalized world, developing countries often face tremendous pressures coming from developed countries, international agencies, transnational and national companies to completely open up their economies. It is proven that liberalization can and has played a positive role development, however; the Asian crisis has shown up that in some circumstances, liberalization can play havoc, especially on small and dependent economies. This is more so prominent in the field of financial liberalization, where lifting of controls over capital flows can lead to such extreme results as a country accumulating a mountain of foreign debts within a few years, the sudden sharp depreciation of its currency, and a sudden rush of foreign owned and local owned funds out of the country in a few months. So,

Now on the larger scale is the impact on the institutional level of the global financial crisis. The financial crisis began in United States in 2007 and spread to other countries. The crisis was triggered by a liquidity shortfall in United States banking system and resulted to the collapse of financial institutions. Asia is one major continent in which the recent financial crisis had spread. The impact of the crisis had far reaching effects on the economy of

Thailand is located on the southeastern part of Burma, sharing its borders with the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. The countries sharing border with Thailand are Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia. The country is divide in to 6 different regions and several different providences. Thailand is currently under the military control of a Constitution Monarchy. This paper will provide a brief analysis of the Kingdom of Thailand current government, the state of the economy and its effects over the population and the insurgency uprising in the southern region.

The Asian Financial Crisis was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of Asia beginning in July 1997, and raised fears of a worldwide economic meltdown (financial contagion). It is also commonly referred to as the IMF crisis.