Asian countries initially sought to deal with attacks against their currencies through the usual means, namely by hiking interest rates and by vigorous intervention in the foreign exchange market. In addition, several authorities including those of Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines imposed limits on currency swap trading. The Bank of Thailand was the first Asian central bank to see its efforts go for nought, to be soundly - and no doubt bitterly - defeated by the markets, but it was by no means the last. Those of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea and Taiwan subsequently gave way to the massive waves of currency selling pressure which devastated Asian markets in the second half of 1997. Even the much respected (and feared) Monetary Authority of Singapore allowed the Singapore dollar to trade with substantially more flexibility than its trade-weighted value - which the MAS tracks - might otherwise have allowed for.
The initial reaction from many Asian authorities to the beating their currencies and asset markets took was entirely predictable, encapsulated most memorably by Dr. Mahathir Mohamed on September 20, 1997 at the IMF conference in Hong Kong. Those newsworthy comments, lambasting the currency speculators of the developed world for deliberately impoverishing developing countries were extraordinary only for their vehemence and their candour. They know doubt expressed in public the sentiments which many Asian officials privately shared. External reasons and “forces” were sought and found to explain the tempest which had struck poor, innocent Asia, from western speculators, and financial neo-colonialists to the Jews. To a westerner not directly involved in or affected by the Asian crisis, such sentiments seemed irrelevant nonsense at best, and utterly disgraceful at worst. More to the point, whatever the merits or otherwise of the view that the causes of the Asian crisis were largely external, this did nothing to alleviate or stop the crisis itself.
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