In the early ’90s, East Asian countries had liberalized their financial and capital markets—not because they needed to attract more funds (savings rates were already 30 percent or more) but because of international pressure, including some from the U.S. Treasury Department. These changes provoked a flood of short-term capital—that is, the kind of capital that looks for the highest return in the next day, week, or month, as opposed to long-term investment in things like factories. In Thailand, this short-term capital helped fuel an unsustainable real estate boom. And, as people around the world (including Americans) have painfully learned, every real estate bubble eventually bursts, often with disastrous consequences. Just as suddenly as capital flowed in, it flowed out. And, when everybody tries to pull their money out at the same time, it causes an economic problem. A big economic problem.

This was being reported by The New York Times yesterday:

[T]he Bush administration is [...] leaning on foreign governments to pitch in with bailout programs of their own as needed. “We have a global financial system and we are talking very aggressively with other countries around the world, and encouraging them to do similar things, and I believe a number of them will,” [Henry] Paulson[, US Treasury secretary,] said on Sunday.

Via Andrew Brown, who adds:

Extraordinary to reflect that I have lived long enough to see communism die and then the capitalism that replaced it too; to see the nation state and the empire wither away in Europe, and now to return in Asia, and that I have managed to do this without getting very old at all.

(Via FP Passport.)

http://tinyurl.com/6kmx4c