Asian economies are engaged, in a process of
economic restructuring and financial sector reform
under the surveillance of the IMF and subject to its
bailout conditions. The implementation of the IMF
bailout package involves severe austerity measures
that inflict hardships on the segments of the most
marginalised and poverty-stricken populations in the
Asia-5 economies. The necessity for the domestic
political leadership to rise to the occasion and
implement the bitter IMF medicine without unleashing
massive social unrest and political turmoil represents
a considerable challenge to Asia-5 policymakers
today.
Whilst achieving the internal balance needed to
bounce back to the pre-crisis growth locus remains a
question of domestic political leadership and astuteness, the external balances of the Asia-5 economies
are inextricably interwoven with the performance of
the global economy. The sudden collapse of the Asian
economic miracle and the spread of the crisis
contagion or its foreign repercussions are going to
affect the growth dynamics of the locomotive
economies of the world: the USA, Europe and Japan.
Furthermore, the Asian crisis contagion, which is
basically the upshot of panic reaction by short-term
international investors in response to perceived risks
and dangers of imminent default by their borrowers,
are likely to be replicated in Russia and Latin America
(Brazil), thereby re-running the Asia-5 crisis and the
IMF bailouts in these countries. The proliferation of
financial crises and the ensuing exchange-rate
volatility and investor uncertainty will sap world
growth and trade dynamics.
The ominous rumblings that the world economy is
heading for a recession does not augur well for the
speedy recovery of Asia-5 from the crisis that has
engulfed it over the past year. The performance of the
global economy over the short term will depend
crucially first, on how the Japanese economy reforms
its financial system and extricates itself from the
current slump; and second, on how the political and
financial turmoil in the Russian economy is quarantined without its crisis contagion spilling over to the
developing economies of Latin America and Asia. On
the positive side, the establishment of the euro and
the revitalisation of the European economy, together
with the continued strong economic performance by
the US economy, would continue to act as major
locomotives for world trade and growth. The faltering
of these locomotive economies due to the pursuit of
restrictive policies would slow down the global
economy and impair the strategies implemented by
the Asia-5 economies to regain the pre-crisis-growth
momentum.