The above indicates that one needs to be very careful in judging the fiscal or quasi-fiscal position of the country. The way many policies were carried out under the Thaksin government tends to hide the true future liabilities of the government. If true lessons have been learned from the crisis, this should nothave happened. The best approach is to be very transparent about what is happening, what are the commitments and what are the risks. If government policies are shrouded by obscurity, there is a clear danger that before the risks to economic stability can be clearly seen, the problems might have already become too big to be easily handled.
Notes
1. For various discussions, see, for example, Sachs (1997) , Feldstein (1998) , Krugman (1998) , Stiglitz (1998) , United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (1998; Chapter 4) , and Stiglitz (2002).
2. See Vichyanond (2001, 2002) for discussions of complications involved in debt restructuring.
3. Officially of course the central bank will almost always say that the exchange rate is determined by market forces.
4. If the target could not be met shortly after the system was introduced then it would be very difficult to establish credibility for the system.
5. For discussions of the status and directions of regional financial cooperation, see Sussangkarn and Vichyanond (2007