IMF arranged $58.35 bn rescue package for SK in December 97.
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Well yes, but this didn't mean the same thing to S. Korea as a similar fact meant to Argentina, for example.
...
One day, I'm going to have to write down in detail the story my brother-in-law, who's S. Korean and a banking analyst, told me about the tactics S. Korean business and government officials used to deal with the IMF's intrusion into their economy.
The gist is as follows: when this 58 billion dollar 'bailout' and the usual IMF strictures that accompany such a loan were announced, everyone knew that this would be used by foreign (mostly American) firms as a means of gaining direct control of one of the world's most competitive economies. Counter-plans were made to handle this, the most obvious being an all-out-effort to repay the loan and get out from under the IMF's thumb as quickly as possible -- which Seoul has been able to do rather nicely. The important thing was the total lack of faith the S. Koreans had in the IMF and the Americans. They knew they were being played and simply decided to get in the game rather than trust their 'friends'.
But getting back to Dennis and Ulhas' point-counter-point arguments...
Japan and S. Korea are still client states of the United States. This verifies Ulhas' point about continued American strength. However, S. Korea, even when facing one of the primary instruments the West uses to break the back of economies, the IMF, possessed sufficient industrial, economic and organizational strength to finesse the problem as hackers might say. This indicates a reduction of US leverage.
This means you're both right though you may not see it.
Ulhas: yes, of course the US is still the Godzilla of nations but it's not technologically stronger than Asia or Europe and its economic strength is no longer sufficient to guarantee getting its way everywhere. As I wrote previously, When you leave out fighter jets and space probes from your accounting, the US no longer has any significant technological advantage over other fully industrialized countries -- not even very small ones like S. Korea. This type of supremacy is gone, never to be retrieved because technological expertise is becoming universal.
But Dennis, this doesn't mean the United States is due for an imminent fall as I think you're saying. What it does mean is that the situation is more difficult, both psychologically and practically, for the superpower which has structured much of its interactions with the world around the idea of total supremacy in, as Ulhas wrote, "technological, military and cultural" areas.
To lose that total economic and technological dominance is a blow to self esteeem and a challenge to the present method for ensuring profitability and securing prosperity for the American middle class.
This is the real problem offshoring, to pick a prominent example, represents to, first of all workers and later, American capital itself. If skilled labor exists virtually everywhere, if industrial and tech expertise can be gotten in a wide variety of locations, if, in other words the actual stuff of modernity is being dreamed of and made across a wide part of the globe, what makes the US special?
I think Ulhas, you believe the US to be stronger than it really is and Dennis believes it to be weaker than the facts suggest.
.d.