Economics
Mahathir Still Hates Currency Traders 20 Years After Asia Crisis
- Former premier hasn’t lost disdain for currency speculators
- His crisis capital controls aren’t viewed as radical now
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As the Asian financial crisis raged on two decades ago, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad committed economic heresy by rejecting an International Monetary Fund bailout and slapping capital controls on global investors.
Mahathir blasted currency traders as "unscrupulous profiteers" in an "immoral" line of work. Billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, who bet big and won big against the British pound in 1992, returned fire, predicting that Mahathir’s policies would be a "recipe for disaster."