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Article: The Chastening: Inside the Crisis that Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the I.M.F.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- National Observer - Australia and World Affairs
- Article date:
- September 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Council for the National Interest. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Paul Blustein New York: Public Affairs, 2001, pp. 426.
Paul Blustein is a staff writer at The Washington Post, and therefore carries with him the left-of-centre and internationalist outlook of that very liberal newspaper. Nonetheless his analysis of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the attempts by the International Monetary Fund to stem it is perceptive and is of importance.
Blustein points out that the adoption of I.M.F. rescue packages by Asian countries did not have the intended stabilising effects. In 1997, in Thailand the approval of an I.M.F.-led rescue totalling $U.S. 17 billion did not prevent the immediate further falls in the baht. ...