Don’t Blame the Fed for Asia’s Problems
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Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- It’s time to set our clocks back inAsia. Not to 1997, as many are recommending, but to 1994.
Memories of the former year remain raw. Currencies had goneinto free fall and current-account deficits exploded. Centralbankers and International Monetary Fund officials scurried tocontain the chaos. It’s true that another 1997-like crisis ishighly unlikely. Today, exchange rates are more flexible,foreign-currency debt is lower, banks are healthier, countriesare sitting on trillions of dollars of reserves, and economiesare far more transparent. The differences between 1997 and todaytrump the similarities.