In the recent crises, the key question is why did all this capital suddenly leave? One year
ago, as the capital withdrawals swept across Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and
later, Korea, there were four main culprits identified as causes of the crisis: (i) weaknesses within
the Asian economies, especially poor financial, industrial, and exchange rate policies; (ii) overinvestment
in dubious activities resulting from the moral hazard of implicit guarantees, corruption,
and anticipated bailouts; (iii) financial panic, in that what began as moderately-sized capital
withdrawals cascaded into a panic because of weaknesses in the structure of international capital
markets and early mismanagement of the crisis, and (iv) exchange rate devaluations in mid-1997
in Thailand (and late in the year in Korea), that may have plunged these countries into panic.