On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Brad DeLong wrote:
>
> > No... Soros was long Asia... Tiger was long Asia... The people who
> > tried to pull down the HK$ were different...
According to Krugman in _The Return of Depression Economics_ (1999), both Soros and Tiger were "rumored" to be prominent in the "double play" against Hong Kong (p. 126). Has evidence come to light since that this wasn't true?
> I recall something on CNBC about how punters were shorting the HK$ in
> order to short the HK stock market, through some obscure loophole. The HK
> quasi-central bank stepped in to quash this. Or am I misremembering?
No, you're right. It happened in August 1998. The speculators shorted the HK market and the HK dollar at the same time thinking it was inevitable that either the HK dollar would get devalued, or the HK Monetary Authority would defend it by driving up interest rates, which would tank the market. Instead, the HK Monetary Authority responded by buying 5 or 10% of the stocks in the market, driving it up sharply and burning them badly. But I'm not sure I understand how this can be called a cause of the Asian Crisis. Wasn't this almost a year after it began? Making the whole affair more of an effect than a cause? And then on top of that, didn't the speculators get crushed?
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com