TOKYO, July 27 (AP)
THE IMF'S CHARM OFFENSIVE IN ASIA (The Business Times, Singapore)
The "charm offensive" which the International Monetary Fund has launched toward East Asia has attracted much comment, but precisely why are Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his aides wooing the region with such assiduousness? Ostensibly, it is because the IMF feels bad about being so beastly to East Asia at the time of the 1997 currency crisis, and is anxious to show that it is now a much more user-friendly institution than the domineering and arrogant task- master it appeared to be a decade or so ago...
Truth be told, the overriding reason behind the charm offensive is that the IMF and its principal paymaster, the United States, financially need East Asia far more nowadays than this region needs them. So, rather than Asia coming cap in hand to the IMF now it is a matter of the IMF coming bouquet in hand to Asia. There has been a huge shift in financial resources since the days when a number of East Asian countries were forced to become supplicants. East Asia's total foreign exchange reserves have virtually quintupled since 1997, to more than US$5 trillion, which is approaching seven times what the IMF can muster, even with the augmented resources it was given to deal with the recent crisis...
East Asia remains suspicious of the charm offensive. They see their reserves as a means to an independence of action denied to them in the 1997 crisis, and at least a part of these reserves will be parked not in the IMF but in East Asia's own quasi-regional monetary fund, the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization. (July 27)
THE IMF'S CHARM OFFENSIVE IN ASIA (The Business Times, Singapore)
The "charm offensive" which the International Monetary Fund has launched toward East Asia has attracted much comment, but precisely why are Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his aides wooing the region with such assiduousness? Ostensibly, it is because the IMF feels bad about being so beastly to East Asia at the time of the 1997 currency crisis, and is anxious to show that it is now a much more user-friendly institution than the domineering and arrogant task- master it appeared to be a decade or so ago...
Truth be told, the overriding reason behind the charm offensive is that the IMF and its principal paymaster, the United States, financially need East Asia far more nowadays than this region needs them. So, rather than Asia coming cap in hand to the IMF now it is a matter of the IMF coming bouquet in hand to Asia. There has been a huge shift in financial resources since the days when a number of East Asian countries were forced to become supplicants. East Asia's total foreign exchange reserves have virtually quintupled since 1997, to more than US$5 trillion, which is approaching seven times what the IMF can muster, even with the augmented resources it was given to deal with the recent crisis...
East Asia remains suspicious of the charm offensive. They see their reserves as a means to an independence of action denied to them in the 1997 crisis, and at least a part of these reserves will be parked not in the IMF but in East Asia's own quasi-regional monetary fund, the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization. (July 27)
