intro

[Carrol Cox]

Dennis, I'm slow at reading charts, and I'm having difficulty interpreting
this one. I assume that a "Total" should refer to the sum of some set of
numbers, but I can't make *any* of the numbers below add up to even an
approximation of the numbers in the "Total" column. Please explain a
little bit. Are all of them absolute figures or are some of them
percentages? What, for example, does the 57.9 billion in the first row
refer to: China's total foreign debt? Then what is 18.7 a total of? And
does the 2.9 for EU include the sums for France, Germany, and UK, and if
so why is it smaller than any of them. I am utterly bewildered. Part of
the trouble is that "Exposure" is not a meaningful term to anyone who does
not know the full context.

Carrol


> April 1998 issue of "The Banker" had an interesting chart on page 59,
> which summed up the exposure of Japanese, European and US banks to the
> various Asian countries, reproduced below (all figures in billions US$):
> 
> Country	        Total	Japan	France	Germany	UK	EU	USA
> China	        57.9	18.7	7.3	7.3	6.9	28.1	2.9
> Hong Kong	22.3	87.4	12.8	32.2	30.1	99.5	8.8
> Indonesia	58.7	23.2	4.8	5.6	4.3	22.5	4.6
> Malaysia	28.8	10.5	2.9	5.7	2	12.7	2.4
> Philippines	14.1	2.1	1.7	2	1.1	6.8	2.8
> Singapore	211.2	65	15.4	38.4	25.2	113.3	5.2
> South Korea	103.4	23.7	10.1	10.8	6.1	36.3	10
> Taiwan	        25.2	3	5.2	3	3.2	14.4	2.5
> Thailand	69.4	37.7	5.1	7.6	2.8	19.8	4
> 
> source: Bank of International Settlements
> 
> 
> So Japan had 46% of the total exposure to Asia, but Europe as a whole had
> even more: 59.8% of the total! The US banks weighed in at a piddling 7.3%.
> Also interesting: the share of the German banks alone was 19.1%, bigger
> than the UK's share of 13.8%. Admittedly, the giant Brit banking firm
> HSBC, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, though nominally headquartered in
> London, has its historical roots as a Hong Kong city bank: still, the
> Continental Europeans have moved into Asia bigtime, and are at least as
> important to the region as Japan. If Asia recovers, then the EU-Japan
> codominion will have passed its first major test: it will have flexed its
> muscles and shown that it can manage its neocolonies more efficiently 
> than its American predescessor. Today Seoul, tomorrow Warsaw!
> 
> -- Dennis
> 
>