G'day Penners,
I've just been reading *Business Week*'s (26/1) 'How to stop the currency
crisis and get Asia going again'. Y'know, I don't think they can do it!
I'd love some comment on this (and shall offer mine as soon as I'm sure
they're not daft).
Here's the gist of it - in 9 phrases that may oversimplify the simplistic:
1. A New Team: a task force of top private bankers, IMFers, accountants,
and G8 central bankers to design a region-wide solution.
2. Identify all hidden debts and all doomed firms.
3. 'short-term' punishing interest rates and currency floors.
4. Roll over the short-term debt of core banks in the region. Issue bonds,
lengthen repayment schedules, governments (or even IMF) guaranteeing
interest payments, that sort of thing ...
5. Western banks swap debt for equity - everyone takes losses and it's got
to be quick.
6. More stabilisation funding - +/- $100 billion.
7. Establish an Asian Reconstruction Fund to sell bad assets and speed up
private workouts to stregthen balance sheets.
8. A new regulatory authority to introduce uniform regional rules re.
disclosure, bankruptcy processes, supervision of banks, accounting
standards and securities laws. Westerners train locals accordingly.
9. G8 nations, especially selfish ol' Japan, offer open markets and at
least growth maintenance.
Well, waddya reckon?
Cheers,
Rob.
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Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.
Phone: 02-6201 2194 (BH)
Fax: 02-6201 5119
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'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.' (John Stuart Mill)
"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital." (Karl Marx)
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