Currency Boards and Currency Restrictions

[Brad De Long]

Re:
>
>Soros denies his culpability for the Asian financial crisis and indeed he
>is presumably a good bogey man for a system that is inherently about the
>rapid transfer of short term financial risks across the world. But official
>Chinese papers on Monday mentioned his name in connection with the
>continued pressure on the Hong Kong dollar, and Malaysia'a Mahathir
>Mohammed, has publically named him as a focus of suspicion.

As best the IMF can tell (and the IMF can tell pretty well) Soros--and the
hedge fund sector in general--were long East Asian assets throughout most
of 1997. Most of the initial wave of capital flight from East Asia came
from within East Asian countries, as insiders (Mahathir Mohammed's cousins,
perhaps?) with more of a sense of the fragility of the boom pulled their
money into New York and Zurich.

At least Mahathir Mohammed isn't blaming the Jews...

Brad DeLong