The International Community's Response to the Asian Finanical Crisis
分析了亚洲金融危机的三个根源（高短期债务、固定汇率、弱银行监管），并讨论了IMF主导的应对措施及其对美国经济的影响。
As you know, the U.S. economy just completed another stellar year, marked by strong growth and declining inflation. Indeed, the low inflation of recent years has been instrumental in reinvigorating the U.S. economy, helping unleash a new vibrancy and confidence across the country. However, the shock wave working its way toward us from the Western Pacific will likely be a countervailing force in our economy. Financial turmoil in a handful of Asian countries should slow the growth of spending by foreigners on U.S. goods and services. On balance, most economists-and I would include myself in this group-are currently guessing that reduced demand for our exports will trim perhaps a half percentage point off our overall growth rate over the next year. Of course, the degree of uncertainty surrounding this estimate is large. The actual slowdown will depend on how developments in Asia play out-including the policy response there and abroad. Even those of us in the Tenth District are not immune from events in Asia. Many local industries-such as agriculture, technology, and manufacturing-are global competitors and will be affected by these events. Allowing the Asian crisis to go unchecked would surely have had an increasingly harmful effect on the economies of our district. The origins of the crisis Three elements lay at the foundation of the Asian financial crisis. First, to finance growth in their economies, some Asian countries relied on a large amount of short-term debt relative to equity. While debt plays an important role in the efficiency of a market economy, carrying a large amount of debt also involves high risk. In times of economic stress, short-term debt is an unstable source of funding. In today's global financial marketplace, investors can quickly move their capital out of an economy. This is what happened in these Asian countries. Second, each of these countries with a large deficit load maintained a fixed exchange rate. The fixed exchange rate tended to give businesses and financial institutions in these countries a false sense of security with regard to exchange rate risk, leading them to hold a significant part of their short-term debt in dollars. The volatile nature of dollar-denominated shortterm debt made these Asian economies especially vulnerable to a crisis in the event of a sudden loss of confidence by investors or an unexpected exchange rate depreciation. Third, the banking system in each economy was subject to lax lending standards and weak supervision. With short-term foreign capital flowing into a country, a weak banking system allowed loans to be diverted to questionable investment projects and real estate deals. When the Asian crisis hit, the questionable loans threatened to bankrupt a sizable number of firms and domestic financial institutions. Thailand provides a good example of how these forces came together to cause a crisis. After many years of strong growth, Thailand's economy suffered a slowdown in 1996 and the first half of 1997. As a result, many questionable investments became unprofitable. When Thailand floated the baht on July 2, the belief that there was no foreign exchange rate risk quickly disappeared. Investors lost confidence in the baht and quickly tried to convert their bahts to dollars. When the local currency rapidly depreciated, the cost to Thai businesses of servicing their dollar-denominated debt increased. Then, as domestic residents rushed to hedge their external exposure, exchange rate pressures intensified and the crisis spread to other countries in the region. Some of the contagion was rational since the depreciation of the Thai baht reduced the competitiveness of Thailand's trade competitors. In addition, investors saw the same three elements in other Asian countries such as Indonesia and South Korea-a high degree of debt, a pegged exchange rate, and a weak financial system. Against this backdrop, the IMF-led response has attempted to regain economic order by systematically addressing the underlying elements of the crisis. …