ABSTRACT
Asia’s downsizing is now a reality. With the burst of bubble economics, it was not only the bloated and overextended firms and markets that took a direct hit. The simultaneity of falling currencies, falling equity markets, receding GDP figures and indifferent export performances is telling. Today’s Asian crisis is not a cyclical adjustment or even a correction of the excessive optimism of the past. It is Asia’s major economic emergency of the past 50 years, far surpassing, for example, the effects of the 1974 oil shock. In fact, the similarity of today’s trend with the pattern of the 1929 to 1939 world Depression is being slowly recognized.
