The WSJ article is not too far off. There has been probably more restructuring than in some of the other "East Asian crisis economies," but certainly not as much as the IMF wanted. Furthermore, growth has only barely restarted, if at all. There are all these boomy forecasts, but it has not really taken off yet in any substantial way.
One irony is that the smallish amount of turnaround that has happened has apparently already worked to slow down the restructuring efforts.
A quick summary would be that there has been more restructuring of the banks than there has been of the dominant chaebols. What little there has been of them has been almost entirely just a shell game of shuffling things around. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Friday, May 14, 1999 11:21 AM Subject: Re: Today's Salon (continued) -- "Abrasive prick"
>Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
>
>>Doug is respected not because his views are from the left, but that his
>>views are often validated by subsequent facts.
>
>An invalidated. For example, I thought the U.S. and IMF would really
>succeed in restructuring Korea to their liking. But a front-pager in
>today's Wall Street Journal says, with palpable sadness, that Korea is
>recovering without "reform." Anyone know what the truth is?
>
>Oh yeah, and the WSJ has an op-ed by Rudi Dornbusch saying that while U.S.
>stocks may be a tad overpriced, the adjustment should be "turbulent but
>ultimately soft" - but Japan could still turn into "the biggest financial
>crisis of the postwar period." How reassuring. Funny he should say that
>4-5% U.S. inflation is impossible the very morning the CPI showed a
>month-to-month inflation rate that annualizes to 4.9%.
>
>Doug
>