Asian financial crisis redux?

my previous post was about the wonderful K drama when life gives you tangerines. The plot is about a family and much of it is about trying to make a living, starting in poverty and working their way up to a middle class existance.

One of the major subplots in the middle of the drama was the unemployment and hardships suffered by the family due to the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

that lesson should be noticed by the Yanks who are opposing the DOGE cuts and the financial problems in the USA.

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  many Asians think that rich people manipulating the stock market for gain either precipitated the crisis or made it worse.

And high on the list of those manipulating the crisis was Soros.

TBSPanorama/Bloomberg:

At the combined annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in September 1997, a conflict raged over who was to blame for the nascent financial calamity, and what kind of economic model would emerge after it. The main protagonists were Mahathir Mohamad, at the zenith of his power as prime minister of Malaysia, and George Soros, the billionaire who made bold bets against the currencies of Thailand and Malaysia in the run-up to the crisis. A few years earlier, Soros had defeated the Bank of England's efforts to prop up the pound. Mahathir, for his part, had presided over high growth rates for much of his 16 years in office that were now at risk of being undone. With Thailand already subject to the strictures of an IMF-led bailout and Indonesia hurtling down the path toward one, Mahathir feared Malaysia could be next. Soros was portrayed by Mahathir and other nationalists as representing global capital, in all its fickleness — and drew scrutiny (and sometimes praise) for his ability to spot countries and assets that were starting to go awry.

Investopedia also discusses manipulation and interference that made the crisis worse.  

The Bottom Line In 1997, decades of economic policy planning that featured close relationships among government policy planners, regulators, the industries they regulated, and financial institutions came to a head when markets began putting downward pressure on Asian currencies.  

italics mine....the markets did it.  

This is like those headlines that shout a car drove into a crowd, or an AK47 killed people: as if these things were independent of human intervention.

Which is why the president of Malaysia blamed Soros:

ah, but hedge funds and Soros various funds didn't make a profit: They broke even so you are wrong, says this article. 

Except of course everyone else went broke, so breaking even is sort of winning isn't it?,,, or maybe the aim was not to get rich, but to gain power?

 

this Bangkock post article looks back and says that one result was:

With contagion, the risk of financial crisis to a country is not limited to its own vulnerabilities, but can be a result of market contagion that turns the underlying weaknesses into a crisis. This means, under globalisation, a financial crisis is no longer an isolated individual country problem but a collective problem that needs to be tackled collectively -- through an organised regional or global body whose job it is to prevent and resolve financial crises. so welcome to the New World Order.

italics mine.

So did big shots controlling the world manipulate things so that the ultimate result would be centralized control of the world economy? 

are we seeing "markets" manipulating the economies of the world again, this time in the USA under an incompetent Biden, and no one except for conspiracy sites dare to ask the question: What is really going on?

Trump knows business, and knows how to play dirty in business: so right now he is manipulating the world wide financial situation by threats of tariffs: He points out that other countries take advantage of tariffs on the US while the US is not supposed to notice. So since what is good for the goose is good for the gander, he says change or else. Drop the tariffs or else. And saying to companies: Invest in the USA.

Not popular, but a fast way to equalize things to stimulate fair trade.

But China could be the problem: They are calling in the debts from a lot of countries who they sent "AID" but actually what they did was did stuff and it was a loan to be paid back and now the loan is due. And they are threatening war against Taiwan, the Philippines, and India (and if Russia doesn't watch out, Siberia is next on the list of lost Chinese possessions).

which is why Trumpieboy calls Russia crazy for not trying to make peace.  

the kerfuffle about Greenland and Canada was actually a headsup that China was expanding their economic control of these countries so they could take over the Arctic trade routes. And this only makes sense if you know that they are also infiltrating Eastern Siberia with a lot of migrant workers. 

Well, never mind. 

I don't understand economics, but if you read history, you know that economic problems and depressions cause revolutions and wars.

The Chinese curse/blessing goes: May you live in interesting times.