> Anyway, Dennis reckons:
>
> >Though
> >Indonesia and Thailand are clearly being nailed to the cross of the
> >T-bill (a.k.a. rentier gold),
>
> and I'd love to know what he means.
Neither of these countries have well-entrenched developmental states, and depend mightily on foreign (especially Japanese) capital to run their factories etc. They're basically sources of cheap, docile labor. The T-bill (US Treasury bond) is the main reserve currency in East Asia these days; Thailand et. al. had to sell lots of these to try to defend their currencies, and failed. So the IMF is going to come down on these people like a sledgehammer on an egg (*splat*). South Korea, though, is something else entirely -- they have very powerful export businesses and a strong state apparatus, which has systematically bailed out enterprise after enterprise, preserving or merging well-run firms as best they can. Basically, the Korean Gov't has taken on, in effect, debts rung up by the private sector -- state socialism pure and simple.
> Indonesia and Thailand seem
> particular messes (so's the poor old Phillipines, but the numbers are
> relatively low), and there Japan is in up to its neck.
> Does this matter?
Yes -- it means Japan is going to take an extremely hot bath on those investments, and that the EU is likely to deepen its influence over the region. For an economic region which Wall Street insists is (1) hopelessly archaic, (2) at death's door, or (3) incapable of bringing off the euro as a new world currency, the EU sure is spinning a mighty web of global investments tighter and tighter around the world economy these days.
-- Dennis