Financial crisis, contagion, and containment : from Asia to Argentina / Padma Desai

Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-291) and index.

The U.S. Economy in Transition -- The Euro: Teething Troubles and Faltering Responses -- Japan: The Lost Decade of the Nineties amidst Policy Paralysis -- The Asian Financial Crisis -- Blocks -- What Are Fundamentals? What Are Structural Issues? -- The Current Account and the Exchange Rate -- Financial Liberalization, Capital Account Decontrol, and the Regulatory Framework -- The East Asian Crisis: A Crisis of Over-Investment or Unregulated, Premature Capital Flows? -- The Asian Crisis Chronology -- The Ruble Collapses in August 1998 -- Block -- The Ruble: Premature Capital Account Convertibility -- Contagion from the Ruble to the Real -- Beyond Bangkok: Crisis Erupts in Buenos Aires and in the Bosphorus -- The Contagion -- International Monetary Fund to the Rescue: How Did It Fare? Badly -- Was There Moral Hazard in the Asian Financial Crisis? -- How Much Corruption? Does Corruption Matter? -- Chilean Capital Inflow Tax -- Capital Account Convertibility in China and India: A Cautionary Tale of Two Countries -- Crisis Prevention and Containment: The Next Steps in Financial Reform.

This book provides a sweeping, up-to-date, and boldly critical account of the financial crises that rocked East Asia and other parts of the world beginning with the collapse of the Thai baht in 1997. Retracing the story of Asia's ""Crisis Five""--Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand--Padma Desai argues that the region's imprudently fast-paced opening to the free flow of capital was pushed by determined advocates, official and private, in the global economy's U.S.-led developed center. Turmoil ensued in these peripheral economies, the Russian ruble faltered, and Braz.