The Thai financial crisis appeared to be very similar to the Mexican financial crisis of 1994-95. In both cases, an enormous amount of capital was injected into the economies, of which a large part was speculative. The capital had caused overlending syndrome of financial institutions that were loosely monitored by the central bank. The central bank, on the other hand, promised to bailout financial institutions that failed in operation, a policy which had created moral hazard in the financial institutions as well as the creditors and depositors. Then, good years had passed; the economies had experienced slow economic growth and capital outflow. The outflow of capital had caused a bank run which later developed to be a banking crisis. And the necessity of the central bank to get the economy going by supplying foreign currency out of its reserves had been proved to be too huge a task that the central bank finally had to commit to an exchange-rate switching policy, and the economies had to suffer a long period of recession afterwards.
(Points of argument which would follow were products of an attempt to understand and explain some of the behaviors of the economy. The points were only suggestive, not necessarily true. Plus, the points were essentially based on psychological aspects of the issue, and, thus, should be considered together with tangible aspects which were believed to be more rational. For example, as the reader realized that Thailand had believed that it would be after Japan not Mexico, the reader should also have in mind the fact that the Thais had not felt carefree as they must have seen their country’s statistics, for example, persistent current account deficits, problematically mismatching ratio of foreign liabilities to foreign assets, which indicated a fragile condition of the country.)
So do the Thais forget the painful lessons of Mexico? I would say “yes, but without many choices.” By the time that Mexico had entered into the financial crisis (1994-95), the Thai economy had begun to get used to a new style of economic liberalization. Thai people had earned more income and had become more and more proud of the growth of their economy. A set of government who came in and suddenly made the economy less appreciable would become unpopular. Thus, the governments in power during that period had preferred not to change the picture of the economy much. So, political concerns did have impacts on the direction of the economic policies. Besides, the Thai economy had had one characteristic much contributing to the rationale of the economy along its path. It believed in a miracle, and that it could make things different. As commented by Paul Krugman:
“Well, maybe the revelation that Asian nations do, in fact, live in the same economic universe as the rest of us will provoke some much-needed reflection on the realities of the Asian economic “miracle.””[2]
The Asian countries were believed to have Japan as a model for their economic development. After World War II, Japan could quickly and profitably expand its economy especially its manufacturing sector, and became the second largest economy of the world in only less than four decades afterwards. It started from exporting low-technical goods such as watches and electronic appliances. Only shortly afterward, it shifted to produce merchandises which required higher level of technology, for example, automobiles, computers. Then, it moved on to cross-border investment, and not long afterwards, it became the biggest creditor of the world. The Asian countries had observed the success of Japanese economy and believed that they, as well, could do the same thing. Thailand, for example, had started with producing and exporting electronic and automobile parts, then moved on to real estate investment, and planned to do good at capital investment. In less than a decade, the country had grown so much that it believed that it had been on a right path, a path which would lead it to the prosperity that Japan had enjoyed. Investment boom and the rise of cities were evident in the path of the growth. Ten years ago, if you traveled along Chao-Pra-Ya river, a main river in Bangkok, you would see only vast rice fields along both sides of the river. Today, however, the rice fields had turned to be tall business buildings, hotels, and restaurants. This sort of phenomenon also happened to some other provinces in Thailand which had grown to be cities as the economy had expanded so much that Bangkok could not alone accommodate all the businesses and industries. And in 1994-95, Thailand must observe the economic crisis and collapse of the Mexican economy. Unfortunately, it probably would have seen itself after Japan and not Mexico. Miraculously successful as it had seen itself to be, it believed that it would not fall.