Arestis y Glickman 1999 Financial Crisis in South East Asia

UEL, Department of Economics, Working Paper No.22, December 1999

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FINANCIAL CRISIS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA:DISPELLING ILLUSION THE MINSKYAN WAY

Philip Arestis and Murray GlickmanUniversity of East London

Abstract

This paper puts forward a specifically Minskyan account of the road to the financial crisis inSouth East Asia (1997/1998), extending his Financial Instability Hypothesis to the case ofthe open `liberalised economy. The analysis suggests that threats to growth and employmentemanating from the financial sector, which Minsky identified in the closed economy setting,are much intensified in open, liberalised and, especially, developing economies. Rivalexplanations of the crisis are examined and rejected in favour of the extended Minskyanexplanation. Policy implications are derived and discussed.

KEYWORDS:

Crisis, Open Economy, South East Asia, Financial Liberalisation, Financial Instability.

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

E12, G15, G32, O53.


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FINANCIAL CRISIS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA:DISPELLING ILLUSION THE MINSKYAN WAY

Philip Arestis and Murray GlickmanUniversity of East London

Only an economics critical of capitalism can be a guide to successful policy forcapitalism. (Minsky 1986)

1 INTRODUCTION1

Hyman Minskys Financial Instability Hypothesis would seem to have obvious application to the

recent experience of financial crisis in Asia. It is therefore a matter of surprise that, while many

commentators may have been influenced by his ideas, so few have attempted to use them explicitly as

a basis analysing the crisis.2 The whole of the November 1998 issue of the Cambridge Journal of

Economics, for example, was devoted to the crisis in Asia. Yet it contained just one direct reference

to Minsky (1986). In an attempt to fill the analytical gap, this paper seeks to build on Minskys work

to show that it does indeed offer the basis for a convincing interpretation of the crisis in Asia and one

which has important implications for policy.

One factor which may have contributed to the neglect of so rich a potential source of understanding is

that, in contrast to the patently open nature of the Asian crisis, Minskys model is developed within a

closed economy framework.3 Another is that his work predates the current era of financial

liberalisation. In the next section of this paper, we argue that his Financial Instability Hypothesis

1 Participants at a seminar held at Queens' College Cambridge on 9th March 1999 offered manyinsightful comments on, and a host of lively and helpful criticisms of, an earlier version of this paper. The authors are grateful to them. They also wish to thank Gary Dymski, Malcolm Sawyer and twoanonymous referees for pointing them in the direction of some significant revisions to the argument

contained in the paper, which, the authors hope, have helped to clarify and tighten it considerably.

2 See, though, Arestis (1998) and Kregel (1998) for two exceptions.

3 Minsky (1992, p.356) does, however, recognise the importance of open-economy analysis to theissues with which he is concerned.


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can in fact be extended readily to the open-economy, liberalised, case. On this theoretical basis, the

papers third section proceeds to put forward a specifically Minskyan account of the road to financial

crisis in South East Asia, whilst the fourth section considers and rejects a number of rival explanations

in favour of this Minskyan account. Major policy implications of the discussion are then developed,

before, finally, some conclusions are offered.

Minsky's vision was that the normal functioning of our economy leads to financial trauma and crises

... (I)n short, ... financially complex capitalism is inherently flawed (Minsky 1986, p.287, italics in

original). In contrast, the conventional wisdom of today is that markets work. On this latter view,

the proposition that the source of financial crisis must be exogenous to the financial system and

located either in government failure or shocks (or both) is taken as more or less axiomatic truth.

Equally, the fact that financial crisis and the spread of financial liberalisation have coincided in Asia

can only be regarded as a matter of chance.

The contention of this paper is that such judgements are based on a failure to understand (or a refusal

to recognise) the endemic instability of financial markets. We are sure our extension of Hyman

Minsky's ideas (essentially 1957, 1975, 1982, 1986) to dispel these illusions of the age would have

been warmly applauded by the man himself, had he been alive today.

2 MINSKY IN A CLOSED, AN OPEN AND A LIBERALISED ECONOMY

In this part of the paper, we set out and attempt to justify our extension of Minskys theory to the open

economy (Section 2.2) and the financially liberalised economy (Section 2.3). First, however, in

Section 2.1, we point to various features of his closed-economy analysis that are of relevance to our

extension of it and elaborate on them to the brief extent necessary to support our later argument.

2.1 Minskys closed-economy analysis

The essence of Minskys originality is to be found in the central motif of his work, the thesis that

forces capable of producing financial fragility are built into the system itself. The following passage

succinctly expresses his view:

(I)n a world of uncertainty, given capital assets with a long gestation period, ... the

successful functioning of an economy within an initially robust financial structure will

lead to a structure that becomes more fragile as time elapses. Endogenous forces


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make a situation dominated by hedge finance unstable ... (Minsky 1986, p.213)

Certain elements of the analysis Minsky developed to support this thesis are key for the purposes of

the present discussion. These are identified under the series of sub-headings that follow.

(i) The drive towards financial innovation

For Minsky, the drive to innovate financing practices by profit-seeking households, businesses, and

bankers (ibid, p.197) is at the root of the financial instability inherent in capitalism. For, as he

argues: Profits are available to innovators in financial structures and institutions as well as to

innovators in products, production techniques, and marketing (p.298) and (a)s capitalism abhors

unexploited profit opportunities, market instruments and usages develop to exploit interest rate gaps

(p.213).

In all this, financial intermediaries play a central role. Because bankers live in the same expectational

climate as businessmen4, Minsky writes, profit-seeking bankers will find ways of accommodating

their customers (p.228). Specifically, (t)hey actively solicit borrowing customers, undertake

financing commitments, ... build connections with business and other bankers, and seek out funds

(pp.229-230). It is noteworthy here that Minsky does not simply cite bankers innovating activities as

lenders but stresses the fact that their compulsion to innovate extends to their own borrowing activities

too.

(ii) Hedge, speculative and Ponzi finance

It is not necessary to elaborate in a general way on this celebrated conceptual trinity in this paper5.

However, critical to the discussion below is the fact that Minsky characterises the speculative-

financing unit in two closely related but not entirely overlapping ways. On the one hand, he offers a

definition in terms of such a units own cash flow prospects. Thus he writes that the balance sheet

cash flows from a unit can be larger than the expected income receipts so that the only way they can

4 Pace Gertler (1988), for example, it is this feature that is fundamental in Minsky's analysis andnot what Minsky called (1995, p.207) "peculiar asymmetries in information" that may exist betweenbanks and their clients.

5 Extended discussions of the concepts of hedge-, speculative and Ponzi-financing can be found, forexample, in Minsky (1978, 1982 and 1995).


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be met is by rolling over ... debt; units that roll over debt are engaged in speculative finance (1986,

p.203). At the same time he also refers to the speculative-financing unit in terms of the impact on it

of changes in financial market conditions. For example, he states: speculative ..... finance units are

vulnerable to .. financial-market developments .. as well as to product and factor market events:

increases in interest rates will raise cash-flow commitments without increasing prospective receipts.

Furthermore, as they must continuously refinance their positions, they are vulnerable to financial

market disruptions (ibid., p.209).

For Minsky, the prototypical speculative financial organization (ibid., p.207) is the commercial

bank. In the case of banks, his two characterisations are clearly coincident: they have continually to

engage in refinancing of their liability structures and they are vulnerable to adverse developments in

financial markets. However, even in the closed economy, other cases are not so clear-cut. Consider

a firm that has issued variable-rate, long-dated debt on terms that it expects to be able to meet

comfortably at the time of issue. At that point in time the firm is, on the first of Minskys criteria, a

hedge-financing unit6. For it does not foresee having to roll its debt over. On the other hand, it is,

from the moment the debt is issued, in a speculative financing position in the sense that it is vulnerable

to adverse changes in financial market conditions. We draw attention to this ambiguity here since it

takes on some significance when Minskys theory is extended to the open economy7.

The speculative financing state is also critical in that it exposes the unit to the risk of being forced

into Ponzi-financing arrangements8 by income shortfalls or interest cost escalations, this involuntary

shift constituting a systemic part of the process that leads to widespread bankruptcy (ibid., p.209).

(iii) `Making on the carry'

In Minskys theory, not only is the drive to innovate endogenous but the prospective gains which fuel

it also arise endogenously in the form of arbitrage opportunities generated by an (initially) healthy

financial state. In a world dominated by hedge finance and in which little value is placed on liquidity

6 A hedge-financing unit is defined as one whose "realized and expected income cash flows aresufficient to meeet all ... payment commitments on outstanding liabilities" (Minsky 1986, p.203).

7 See p.9 below.

8 in which the unit has to "increase debt to pay debt" (Minsky 1986, p.203)


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.... the interest rate structure, he argues, yields profit opportunities in financing positions in capital

assets (Minsky 1986, pp.210-211). These arise in three ways:

(a) in an economy with a robust financial structure, short-term interest rates ... will be

significantly lower than the yield from owning capital. (p.211)

(b) interest and principal payments on longer-term private debts, which are synchronized to their

pay-outs on quasi-rents that capital assets are expected to yield, will be low relative to these

quasi-rents (ibid.)

and

(c) the interest rate on short-term money-like liabilities of firms and financial institutions will be

lower than on the longer-term liabilities used in hedge-financing positions in capital assets

(ibid.).

These are the factors that induce units to engage in speculative finance (ibid.). The use of the

generic term unit is significant here, reflecting Minskys insight that these inducements alter the

portfolio choices not only of firms but of households and financial institutions too.

It is pertinent to note that a firm which switches from equity to long-term debt as a source of finance

may or may not, by so doing, become a speculative-financing unit in either of the two senses

distinguished above. However, a unit that borrows short to finance the acquisition of longer-term

assets is speculatively financed in both senses, and, throughout his writings, Minsky emphasises that

this seeking to make on the carry (ibid.) between a short-term liability structure and a long-term

asset profile is the prime factor that injects fragility into the financial structure as an endogenous

phenomenon (p.210).

(iv) Lowering the orthodox barrier: success breeds success

The drive to innovate in the direction of speculative financing, Minsky recognises, meets with

resistance. Bankers, he notes, are always seeking to innovate in financial usages. But orthodoxy

and conservatism can form a barrier to the assimilation of innovation (Minsky 1986, p.212).

However, he notes that legislative and administrative intervention by governments and central bankers

may be one operative force conducive to change (p.197). Another that certainly will be operative is

the fact that a period of success of the economy ... will lead to a lowering of the financial innovation


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barrier, whereas a period of bankruptcies .. has the potential for raising (it). (p.212, note).

As Minsky points out, it is significant that even the effect of success in driving financial innovation

forward is an endogenous outcome. The intrusion of speculative relations into a system of mainly

hedge financing, he observes, increases the demand for assets and therefore ... leads to capital

gains. And, conversely, (a) regime in which capital gains are being earned and are expected is a

favorable environment for engaging in speculative .. finance (ibid., p.210).

Furthermore, he notes, the governor mechanism ..... is often dominated by positive, disequilibrating

feedbacks. An increase in the demand prices for capital assets relative to the supply prices of

investment output increases investment, which increases not only profits but also the ratio of profits to

payment commitments on outstanding debts, the amount of financing available from banks and

financial markets at any set of terms, and businessmen's willingness to invest (ibid., p.228).

(v) The transition from robustness to fragility

Eventually success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure: the absence of serious financial

difficulties over a substantial period leads to the development of a euphoric economy in which

increasing short-term financing of long positions becomes a normal way of life (Minsky 1986,

p.213). In such an atmosphere, even hedge financing can become based upon unrealistic euphoric

expectations with respect to ... product and factor markets (p.209). Thus, for Minsky, waves of

bullish sentiment that sweep financial systems are not episodes dissociated from what has gone before

but are themselves part of a multi-faceted endogenous process.

The effect is to undermine an initially robust financial structure, in which hedge financing

predominates (ibid., p.305). For a marked increase in the fragility of an economy occurs as ...

financing relations assure that an investment boom will lead to an environment with increased

speculative financing of positions, which in turn will lead to conditions conducive to a crisis (pp.217-

218). For Minsky, crisis is characterised by the inability of units to refinance their positions through

normal channels (Minsky 1977, p.140).

(vi) The triggers of crisis

(I)n a fragile financial system continued normal functioning can be disrupted by some not unusual

event, Minsky writes (ibid. p.139). Indications as to what these events might be are given in the


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following passage:

A break in the boom occurs whenever ... reversals in present-value relations take

place. Often this occurs after the increase in demand financed by speculative finance

has raised interest rates, wages of labor, and prices of material so that profit margins

and thus the ability to validate the past are eroded (Minsky 1986, p.220).

The disruptive events cited here are of course themselves entirely endogenous to the process. At the

same time, it is important for present purposes to note that Minskys theory allows for the possibility

that the catalyst of crisis may also be some other, external event9. However, such an event would be

far removed from the exogenous shock that is the staple of neo-classical theory. For Minsky insists

that financial fragility .. is not due to either accidents or policy errors ...(O)ur economy

endogenously develops fragile or crisis-prone financial structures (1977, pp.139-140). The crucial

point here is that, for Minsky, the reasons why a shocking event actually has the power to shock are

emphatically endogenous.

Minsky, as we have already been noted, stresses the fact that banks themselves frequently engage in

speculative financing. He sees this a key factor leading to the generalisation of crisis conditions,

observing that speculative financing activity on their part means that the pressures of disruptive events

are often acutely felt by financial intermediaries, and a deterioration in their abilitiy to make position

will adversely affect the balance sheets of their liability holders. As a result a potential for contagion

exists, although, he adds, (i)ntervention by central banks ..... serves to abort such contagious

developments (1986, p.219).

2.2 The Minskyan Open Economy

Some further comment on Minsky's hedge- and speculative-financing concepts is necessary at this

stage as a preliminary to applying his theoretical framework to the open-economy case.

If the commercial bank is Minskys prototypical speculative unit, the correspondingly prototypical

hedge-financing unit, in a closed economy, might be a firm which financed itself by means of equity

(Minsky 1986 p.305) or, perhaps, long-dated fixed-interest debt. In an open economy, however,

9 Vide the use of the word often in the passage just cited.


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categorisation is not so straightforward, since the dividends and capital gains expected from, or the

debt servicing payable by, such an organisation might be due in foreign currency. The unit would

then be in an analogous position to an organisation with long-dated variable-rate debt in a closed

economy: it could be characterised as a hedge-financing unit insofar as it appears able to meet its

financial obligations given the existing climate of expectations; but it could, on the other hand, be

viewed as a speculative financing unit in the sense that it was vulnerable to adverse changes in

financial conditions, specifically, movements in the exchange rate.

Of course a unit which borrowed short-term in foreign currency to finance domestic long-term assets

would be speculatively financing itself under both of Minskys criteria: as well as needing continually

to roll debts over, it would be vulnerable to changes in interest rates. Additionally, however, it would

be vulnerable to exchange-rate movements. It would seem appropriate to extend Minskys typology

to reflect this open-economy phenomenon by dubbing such an organisation a super-speculative-

financing unit.

On the basis of these observations, we can begin to develop a Minskyan open-economy analysis.

Assume that a domestic upswing is in progress in an economy in which hedge-financing

predominates. Profitability increases absolutely and relative to the cost of capital, and risk

assessments become less guarded and more upbeat. As confidence grows symmetrically, a more

venturesome mood sweeps the financial as well as the real sector. In a globalised system, this mood

will spread rapidly beyond the confines of the country concerned. In the absence of capital controls,

international portfolio investors will turn their attentions to the domestic economy: especially if short-

term rates are low in the major financial centres, liquid funds will switch into the domestic currency;

local banks will experience an upsurge in deposits and will be able to expand their own international

borrowing; prices of local stock market securities of all kinds will also tend to rise. Capital inflows

will tend to offset any tendency for the domestic upswing to push interest rates higher. The

authorities will have no difficulty pegging the country's currency against the US dollar if that is their

policy. If they choose not to do so, the exchange rate will tend to rise. Either way, the external

position will be interpreted as evidence of economic health, fuelling the optimistic mood further and

establishing a lively interest in foreign currency arbitrage.

Minskys theory can be readily extended to provide an illuminating explanatory framework for this

arguably not over-stylised account of the course of events as an economy opens itself up to global


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financial markets. The primary impact of openness is to import the drive towards financial innovation

into the economy in question, as foreign wealth-holders seek out investment opportunities and local

households, firms and banks begin to look abroad for finance.

This era of innovation creates new possibilities for local hedge-financed units to become speculatively

financed, once we allow for this concept to be extended in the way suggested above. Even a unit that

raises finance from foreign sources in ways that leave asset- and liability-maturities matched becomes

vulnerable to foreign exchange market movements. And, of course, those units that are attracted by

currently low-cost opportunities to borrow short term in foreign currency become, in our terms,

super-speculative. Openness thus internationalises the drive to make on the carry.

Furthermore, the insertion of international financial practices into the domestic arena represents an

extremely potent tool for breaking down the domestic orthodoxy barrier. Rising asset prices,

investment and profits validate the initial waves of foreign borrowing and thereby fuel the appetite for

more. Hence the disequilibrating positive feedbacks Minsky identifies are fully operative as factors

reducing domestic financial conservatism. However, openness expands their range: the strength of

the exchange rate as it rides on capital inflows serves to encourage still further the taking of positions,

and especially short-term positions, in foreign currency. For Minsky, success is an endogenous factor

driving financial innovation forward. Openness extends significantly the scope and therefore the

endogenous impact of achievable success.

The upshot is that, sooner or later, the economy falls into a state of internationalised financial

fragility. It then becomes prone (i) to crisis that is domestic in origin but impacts on its external

situation (what we term below a d to e crisis), (ii) to crisis that is external in origin but impacts on its

domestic situation (e to d) and (iii) to crisis-intensifying interactions between (i) and (ii).

A d to e crisis would have its origins in classic Minskyan factors (see Minsky 1986, p.217), such as

the advent of rising costs in the domestic capital goods industries. As Minsky argues (ibid), the result

will be present-value reversal and a decline in asset prices which will mean that speculatively and

super-speculatively financed units will find refinancing increasingly difficult to come by and its terms

increasingly onerous. As they default in increasing numbers and commercial failure spreads, a flight

towards liquidity will break out. Some investors will seek to diversify the now larger liquid element

in their portfolios by shifting into other currencies. Others will act in anticipation of behaviour of this


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kind. The domestic currency will be sold heavily, triggering an exchange rate crisis. Even units that

are hedged in the sense that their asset and liability maturities are matched will now become

vulnerable to the fact that they are speculatively financed in the other sense that their debts are

denominated in foreign currency whereas their cash inflows are not. Furthermore the potential for

contagion will have a global reach.

The possibility of an e to d crisis can be analysed on Minskyan terms on the basis that, once an

economy is open to global financial markets, its state entity can regarded as a financing unit in relation

to the external value of its currency. On the one hand, its residents will accumulate debts to the rest

of the world denominated in foreign currencies. On the other, its central bank may accumulate assets

- foreign currency reserves. So long as reserves are substantial in relation to debts, the country

remains in the equivalent of a hedge-financed position: the payments necessary to maintain the

external value of its currency can always be made. However, as endogenous processes drive up the

foreign liabilities, and especially the short-term liabilities, of residents of our putative open economy,

its debt-to-reserves ratio rises and it becomes increasingly doubtful that its authorities will continue to

be able to finance the transactions they may be called upon to undertake to protect the exchange rate.

The state will then become, in effect, a speculative- and, ultimately, a Ponzi-financing unit in relation

to the wider world.

Under these conditions, the exchange rate becomes a source of uncertainty in relation to which

expectations can wax and wane with destabilising consequences (see, also, Dymski, 1998). Even in

the absence of actual evidence of deterioration in domestic financial conditions, speculators may begin

to doubt the ability of the state to support its currency and, if it were not already in a Ponzi state in

this regard, it will become such now as they may move, possibly on a massive scale, against the

currency concerned.

This external crisis will feed into the domestic situation, first because super-speculatively-financed

units, especially, will be hit and secondly since, if speculators are to act on their fears of rising

debt/reserves ratios, they will first have to liquidate holdings of domestic assets. As they do so,

domestic asset prices will fall and the balance sheet positions of domestic borrowers and lenders alike

will deteriorate. Even domestic units that have remained hedge-financed in the sense that they have

resisted the lure of foreign borrowing may well find themselves dragged down into speculative and

Ponzi positions, which may be difficult to refinance.


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The financial instability of the open economy can in this way be understood in characteristically

Minskyan terms. Openness vastly expands the drive towards financial innovation and extends

opportunities for making on the carry. As a result it decidedly broadens the routes by which units,

including the state itself, can shift from hedged to speculative and Ponzi conditions. The economy is

thus driven endogenously into a fragile condition in which it becomes increasingly exposed to

disruptive events, which, if domestic in origin, will amplify themselves via their external

consequences and, if initially external, will bring adverse domestic repercussions in their train.10

The fact that, in the way just outlined, the state can be regarded as a financing unit in an open

economy has a further consequence. Once it has shifted from a hedged into a speculative and, a

fortiori, into a Ponzi condition, the authorities will tend to hold back from expanding domestic

liquidity in the face of collapsing domestic asset prices and instead raise interest rates to bolster the

exchange rate, bowing to pressures emanating from the international financial system. As we noted

earlier, Minsky stresses the capacity of the monetary authorities to constrain the contagious potential

of fragility in a closed-economy setting. However, in an open setting, in which the state becomes a

financing unit in relation to the external value of its currency, this capacity is, as we have now shown,

much blunted. As result, the deflationary dynamics of financial fragility become very much more

threatening.

2.3 Minsky and financial liberalisation

The open economy just described possesses liberated features in that its capital movements are

unregulated. However financial liberation starts in, and focuses on, the domestic economy, and it is

primarily through its domestic effects that liberalisation intensifies the instability of the financial

system.

The first of these needs little explanation in Minskyan terms. Financial liberalisation produces an

upward step-change in the intensity of the domestic drive towards financial innovation, as it sweeps

away the rules and conventions which previously governed the way banks related to one another and

10 This duality is reminiscent of Kaminsky and Reinhart (1999), but our analysis differs substantiallyfrom theirs, as it is made clear in Section 4 below.


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their customers. It thereby speeds up the process by which debt ratios of commercial concerns and

financial institutions rise, escalating financial fragility, and it hastens the day when banking and

financial crises loom (see, also, Coggins, 1998).

The second effect is on attitudes - market sentiment. Proponents of financial liberalisation seem

increasingly to favour the view that it may be necessary to prepare the ground for liberation11 with

sequenced programmes of free market reforms (Williamson and Mahar, 1998). Our position,

however, is that such reforms,12 only serve to weaken the barrier of financial conservatism which, in

Minsky's view13, acts to contain pressures leading to fragility in the financial system. For, suppose a

policy package of the kind just described is in place and that its deflationary bias does not altogether

stop a Minskyan upswing in its tracks. If it is widely believed that the policy mix is a sufficient

condition for macro-economic stability, it will in effect surround the already buoyant economy with

an aura of safety. What could go wrong? All known dragons have been slain beforehand for,

according to the theory that inspires such reforms, the threat to prosperity comes from irresponsible

government and this threat evaporates in a suitably prudent policy climate. And, since the theory is

part of the conventional wisdom of our age, it is likely to be embedded in the belief systems of

decision-makers in the private sector. In the current ideological state of the world, these policies will

achieve credibility.

The effect could well be to raise to still higher and more dangerously unrealistic levels the feelings of

invulnerability that, on a Minskyan analysis, conditions of economic buoyancy induce. For if he is

right that the true sources of instability are in fact endogenous to the private sector and if we now

superimpose a state of liberationist policy credibility on the economy, the result will be that private-

sector decision makers will not so much disregard danger as look totally in the wrong direction for it.

11 A liberalised financial system seems to be a tender plant indeed. Perhaps economic `botanists'should be seeking to propagate an altogether hardier variety, one that can survive and flourish in amuch wider range of policy climates and real sector soils.

12 The shopping list of reforms might include: (i) `sound' public finances, i.e. budgetary balance orsurplus, (ii) fiscal and monetary policies aimed exclusively at price stability, (iii) tying the exchangerate to one of the major currencies, (iv) greater transparency in the behaviour of the monetaryauthorities.

13 See Section 2.1 (iv) above.


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Seeing none, they will lower their commercial guard even further.14 Credulity would seem to be a

rather better word than credibility to describe what the policy achieves.

Extending Minskys analysis, it therefore seems reasonable to argue that a sequencing of reforms,

such as some liberationists recommend, looks likely to spread a layer of illusion over business

attitudes, weakening inhibitions against speculation still further and reinforcing the tendency towards

euphoria that Minsky postulated as the source of financial fragility. As he observed in parallel

circumstances:

Legislation ... reflect(s) the views about .. the economy .. held by our rulers and their

court intellectuals ... Legislated changes, such as .. the deregulation mania of the later

1970s and 1980s reflect some theory. If the theory is at variance with the way the

economy behaves, the reforms will do little good and may do great harm (Minsky

1986, p.198).15

3 A MINSKYAN ACCOUNT OF THE ROAD TO FINANCIAL CRISIS IN ASIA

In this section we argue that Minskys analytical framework, extended along the lines just proposed,

provides a solid and coherent basis for theorising about the course of events that led to financial crisis

in South East Asia in 1997.

3.1 Timing

In our review of Minsky's theory in the preceding section, we drew attention to his stress on the

barriers presented by established financial usage, which he viewed as bulwarks against the emergence

14 For example, `credibility' will contribute to a "neglect ..... of old text book rules for the prudentoperation of banks and businesses that were universally accepted ..... in earlier days" such as Minskyheld to be partly responsible for the financial instability in the USA evident in the 1970s and 1980s(Minsky 1986, p.199).

15 In this vein, `sequenced' programmes should be judged on the basis of the mounting evidence thatis emerging from countries in which they have been implemented. On this score, such sequencingwould seem to have been a clear failure (see, for example, Arestis and Demetriades, 1997).


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of financial fragility. Our extension of his theory suggests that one major consequence of the financial

liberalisation of an economy will be that many of these barriers will be swept away in short order. On

this analysis, one would expect liberalisation to lead rapidly to crisis. That is indeed what seems to

have occurred in South East Asia in the 1980s and 1990s. The most telling example is, perhaps,

Thailand, where a haemorrhage of foreign capital in early July, 1997, brought the economy to a state

of near collapse, a development which sparked the whole Asian crisis (on which see, for example,

Jomo, 1998). Thailand16 had barely completed the liberalisation of its financial system at the point in

time when crisis erupted (see Table 1).

Critical to our argument, however, is the fact that Thailand is by no means an isolated case. On the

contrary, in all the five most affected countries17, the savage banking and financial crisis that marked

the second half of 1997 followed close on the heels of programmes of far-reaching financial

liberalisation (see, for example, Chang, 1998; Jomo, 1998; and Wade, 1998, for relevant details). As

Table 1 makes plain, the liberalisation process began in the late 70s to mid-80s in each of these

countries but was only completed in the early to mid 1990s. As an indicator of the extent of

`progress' towards liberalisation, the share of state-owned banks in total sectoral assets in the year

prior to liberalisation and in the most recent year for which information is available is given in the

Table. Controls on the flow of capital had been removed in all these countries with the exception of

South Korea, which still retained significant controls in 1996, (although these have since been

dismantled under the terms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) rescue package).18

Table 1The Timing of Liberalisation and its impact on state-owned banks

Country Start ofLiberalisation

Largely LiberalisedFinancial Sector

Total Asset Share of State-ownedBanks (%)

Single Year BeforeLiberalisation

Most RecentYear

16 Banks in Thailand lacked any expertise in collateral evaluation, and committed themselves heavilyto lending to property developers to support the purchase of vastly over-priced office blocks (seeJomo, 1998, ch. 6).

17 South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia as well as Thailand

18 Malaysia has, subsequently to the crisis, reimposed controls (see Note 2 to Table 1).


16

Indonesia 1983 1989-96 76 40

South Korea 1983 1996-98 81 321

Malaysia 1978 1992-962 n a 8

Philippines 1981 1994-96 28 22

Thailand mid-1980s 1992-963 n a 19

Source: Reproduced from Williamson and Mahar (1998), Tables 3 and 4Notes: 1 Share of total deposits.

2 Malaysia reimposed wide-ranging capital controls on the 1st September 1998.3 Currency controls were introduced in May and June of 1997 to deter currency speculators.

3.2 Short-term liability structures and speculative financing

The Minskyan account is also confirmed by the way that liberalisation in South East Asia prompted

dramatic shifts towards speculative and super-speculative financing in the strict and extended

Minskyan senses discussed in the preceding section of this paper. Liberalisation opened the way for

local banks to become heavily involved in risky domestic lending activities and to extend their foreign

operations dramatically. Local firms were set free to borrow abroad. The promotion of stock

markets19 together with external liberalisation in conditions which offered large arbitrage margins on

liquid and short-term capital helped create an investment climate characterised by buoyant

expectations of capital gain and muted risk perceptions.

In such a climate gearing ratios mounted. Table 2 shows how substantial the expansion of bank credit

was in relation to GDP in the 1990s in four of the five countries. The exception was South Korea,

where the growth rate of bank credit was significantly lower than elsewhere and, indeed, was negative

in 1996. This exception is instructive: in South Korea the process of liberalisation was still incomplete

in 1996 (see Table 1).

Table 2Growth of bank credit

bank credit growth less Share of property sector

19 Arestis et al. (1998) and Singh (1997) emphasise the liquidity of stock market assets as the keyfactor making them vehicles for speculation and thus a source of macroeconomic instability. As thestock market grows in importance, short-termism is encouraged and the financial system consequentlybecomes more fragile (see, also, Arestis and Demetriades, 1996, 1997). Financial liberalisation is,therefore, unlikely to enhance long-term growth prospects, least of all in developing countries, whichare particularly susceptible to the problems stock market speculation creates.


17

real GDP growth (%) in bank lending (%)

1990-94 1995 1996 (end-1997)

Thailand 10.0 11.1 5.8 30 - 40

Indonesia 10.4 4.4 5.7 25 - 30

Malaysia 3.1 10.5 13.1 30 - 40

Philippines 10.7 27.4 31.5 15 - 20

South Korea 2.6 2.2 -0.6 15 - 25

Source: Goldstein (1998)

Most of the inflow of funds was directed towards speculative activities. Between 1996 and 1997 this

inflow was of the order of $109 billion, 11 per cent of the pre-crisis aggregate GDP of the five most

affected countries (Arestis, 1998; Kregel, 1998). The credit boom it fuelled was directed towards the

property sector to a remarkable extent and, from a Minskyan point of view, in totally predictable

fashion: banks and their clients at home and abroad followed the classic Minskyan pattern of zealously

seeking out opportunities to `make on the carry' as the wave of optimism unleashed by liberalisation

gathered strength. According to UNCTAD (1998) "Real estate loans are estimated to have accounted

for 25-40 per cent of bank lending in Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines in 1998, funded to an

important extent by short-term foreign borrowing" (p. 63). The value of the collateral on bank loans

was heavily dependent on increases in asset prices. This was fragility in the making, with property

companies and banks who lent to them extremely vulnerable to a downturn in prices, a rise in interest

rates or currency appreciation.

3.3 External balance

This property boom can be regarded as super-speculative (in the sense defined earlier) in view of the

fact that it was dependent on continuous capital inflows to provide the necessary funds to keep the

process going. When the crisis emerged, the property sector suffered substantially, as did others

where similar super-speculative risk-taking was evidenced by the growth in foreign currency

exposures that developed as governments in the five countries removed or loosened controls on

companies' foreign borrowing, abandoned direction of borrowing and investments and resisted calls to

strengthen bank supervision.

Firms discovered that they could borrow abroad half as cheaply as at home. As a result, large capital

flows took place, which swelled domestic banks' reserves and promoted a local credit boom. The


18

willingness of Asian firms and banks to borrow was matched by the willingness to lend exhibited by

overseas wealth holders, who perceived inferior prospective returns elsewhere as a result of slow

growth in the industrialised countries and the economic problems of Latin America. International

investors readily exploited the high growth and interest rates found in these Asian countries,

transferring vast amounts of capital to Asia.

Table 3 gives some indication of the scale of the international private credit flow in the peak years of

the boom, 1995 and 1996 (line 2), of the dominant role played by commercial banks in this flow (lines

4 and 5) and of the size of this credit flow in relation to the total external financing requirement of the

countries concerned (line 1).

Table 3Five Asian economies: External Financing* ($bn)

1995 1996 1997 1998e(1) External financing, net 83.0 99.0 28.3 -4.2

(2) Private flows, net 80.4 102.3 0.2 -27.6

(3)(4)(5)

Private creditors, netCommercial banks, netNon-banks, net

65.1 53.212.0

83.7 62.721.0

-4.2-21.2 17.1

-41.3-36.1 -5.3

(6)(7)

Official flows, netInternational financial institutions

2.6-0.3

-3.3 -2.0

28.1 22.4

23.4 19.3

(8) Reserves excl. gold (- = increase) -14.1 -16.9 31.5 -42.1

e = estimate* Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, PhilippinesSource: IIF (1999, p. 3)

With these net capital inflows on this scale, foreign debt inevitably escalated, most of it private and

short-term (maturing in twelve months or less). Indeed, World Bank (1997) estimates show that, in

1996, Indonesia received the world's third largest private foreign capital flow ($17.96 billion),

Malaysia the fourth (16 billion) and Thailand the sixth largest ($13 billion). Simultaneously, net

inflows of long-term debt, foreign direct investment and equity purchases, which stood at only $25

billion in 1990, soared to more than $110 billion in 1996 (reported in Greenspan, 1997).

Foreign lending on this scale was often at interest rates which reflected only a very modest risk

premium relative to safe returns on investment in the lender country, a state of affairs which,


19

Minsky's theory suggests, is evidence of financial robustness in the initial stages of the process.

However, once perceived risk levels began to rise, what Minsky called the normal functioning of the

financial system was always likely to be disturbed. In an open, liberalised situation this disturbance

would be likely to express itself in substantial capital outflows.

Table 4 shows how substantial the accumulation of short-term external debt became: by 1997 each of

the five Asian countries most affected by the crisis faced, to a greater or lesser degree, a major

external debt problem as measured by its short-term debt to foreign currency reserves ratios.

Furthermore, the shift in net external private finance in these countries between 1996 and 1997 was

around 11 per cent of their combined GDP (reported in the Financial Times, 25 March 1998).

Table 4Short-Term External Debt

Country Short-Term Debt Owed to Banks Reportingto BIS June 1997

($bn)

Reserves(IMF Data)

($bn)

Short-term Debtto Reserves Ratio

(%)

S Korea 70.2 31.3 224Indonesia 34.7 18.9 184Thailand 45.6 37.7 121Philippines 8.3 9.4 88Malaysia 16.3 26.6 61

Sources: IIF (1998)

We argued above that, as speculative financing activity by firms, households and banks drives up the

ratio of private sector debt to national foreign currency reserves, the state, on our extended Minskyan

analysis, is turned into a speculative- and ultimately a Ponzi-financing unit in relation to the exchange

rate. The applicability of this conceptual framework to the Asian crisis seems evident from the data

presented in this section.

3.4 The scale of the crisis and differential impacts

Consciousness of the scale of the Asian financial crisis seems to have transitory at least among

commentators outside the region. This is perhaps because predictions of global spread did not

materalise. However, it is important not to lose sight of the ferocity of the impact of the crisis on the

economies most affected by it.


20

Line 2 of Table 3 shows that the massive private net lending flows to the five economies of 1995 and

1996 went into reverse in 1997 and substantially so in 1998 according to the estimate for that year.20

Net official flows (line 6), which had previously been negative, became significantly positive in 1997

and 1998, boosted by support from international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World

Bank (line 7). These flows, of course, reflect the scale of the foreign exchange crisis, as does the

substantial fall in the official reserves of the five countries recorded for 1997 (line 8).

Table 5 shows the impact of the crisis in three further key dimensions. Between July 1997 and

February 1998 currency depreciations on a dramatic scale were recorded in all five countries and, as

the table shows, these collapses occurred in Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia against a backdrop

of large and, in two cases, spectacular upward movements in interest rates. Table 5 also charts the

scale of the fall of Asian stock markets in the wake of the crisis. It is estimated that between June

1997 and January 1998 equity losses exceeded $700 billion, $430 billion of which were lost by US

investors (Greenspan, 1998). By early February 1998, equity markets in the five countries examined

here had declined (in local currency terms) by 53 per cent to 76 per cent from their 1996 or 1997

peaks (Chote, 1998, p.2).

Table 5South East Asian crisis: impact on currencies, share prices and interest rates (July 1, 1997 -February 16, 1998)

Country Depreciation of thecurrency vis-a-vis the

dollar (per cent)

changes in theshare price index

(per cent)

changes ininterest rates(basis prints)

Indonesia 231.00 -81.74 2,398S Korea 83.04 -63.06 965Malaysia 55.43 -58.41 373

Philippines 51.37 -49.17 0Thailand 87.09 -48.37 -25

Source: Martinez (1998, p.8)

Another indication of the severity of the crisis emerges from estimates of the bail-out costs of support

20 The decline of over $100 billion in net overall private flows between 1996 and 1997 (line 2) isroughly equivalent to 10 per cent of the pre-crisis GDP of these countries (Wolf, 1998).


21

for the banking sectors in the affected countries, which range from 7 per cent of GDP in the case of

the Philippines to over 20 per cent in Thailand (Kaminsky and Reinhart, 1998, p.447; see, also,

Bhattacharya et al., 1997). Finally, Table 6, which contrasts real GDP growth in the five most

affected countries with that in the emerging markets group of countries as a whole, indicates the size

of the real sector effects of the credit boom years of 1995 and 1996 as well as of the consequent

crisis.

Table 6Emerging Markets: Real GDP growth (percentage change on previous year)

1995 1996 1997 1998eAverage Real GDP growth 4.5 5.0 5.1 1.3

Five Asian economies* 8.3 7.0 4.4 -7.2

e= estimate; f= forecast

* Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Philippines.

Source: IIF (1999, Table 6, p. 8)

At the same time, the crisis did not affect the five countries equally. Demirguc-Kunt and Detragiache

(1998) in a study of 53 countries (for the period 1985 to 1995) have shown that, although financial

liberalisation increases the probability that banking crises will occur, their severity can be substantially

lower in countries where the regulatory environment is strong, where Such institutions include

effective prudential regulation and supervision of financial intermediaries and of organised security

exchanges, and a well-functioning mechanism to enforce contracts and regulations (p. 2). Their

findings point to a Minskyan element in the differential impact of the crisis among the five countries:

where the state is willing or able to act to strengthen the barriers of financial orthodoxy, it may go

some way towards mitigating the fragility-inducing effects of liberalisation.

The contention of this paper is that a crisis of the proportions witnessed in South East Asia could not

have arisen from trivial causes and that a theory which identifies deep-seated malfunctions as a source

of crisis is therefore ipso facto more credible than those that do not. The Minskyan account is able to

present a disparate set of phenomena as an integral whole, part of a clearly articulated endogenous

process. Whether there exist any competing accounts that can stand up to scrutiny against it is a

question to which we turn in the next section.


22

4 RIVAL EXPLANATIONS OF THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS

In distinguishing between various theories put forward to explain the crisis in South East Asia, Neely

(1999) contrasts fundamentalist with panic views. In this section we use these labels to categorise

a number of orthodox explanations of the crisis, which we examine and reject in Sections 4.1 and

4.2. We then go on to consider and criticise three equally unconvincing further propositions, namely

that the crisis was attributable to bail-out (Section 4.3), to supposed defects of the Asian model

(Section 4.4) and to cronyism (Section 4.5). Finally, in Section 4.6, we present some general

observations on the differences between our Minskyan analysis of the Asian crisis and these rival

explanations.

4.1 The fundamentalist view

According to this view, associated with the work of Krugman (1979), the roots of the crisis and its

contagious qualities lie in the governmental quasi-guarantee implicit in the exchange-rate pegging

policy widely followed in Asia (see, for example, Krugman, 1998b, 1998c). Thus a recent official

comment runs: The 10-year experience of currency pegs, more or less guaranteeing that fluctuations

relative to the dollar would be less than 10 per cent, was another significant contributory factor

(UNCTAD, 1998).

More specifically, the competitiveness of the Asian economies whose exchange rates were tied to the

US dollar declined as the latter appreciated against the yen and other major currencies. Furthermore,

pegged exchange rates encouraged local banks to undertake predominantly short-term borrowing in

foreign currencies and to lend the converted proceeds domestically. Implicitly, the exchange rate risk

inherent in such activities was transferred to the governments of these countries and these lacked

systems to monitor, let alone to challenge, such behaviour. A combination of higher US interest rates

in early 1997, and the decline in the world prices of South East Asian countries major exports over

the same period (Krugman, 1997), then caused this particular bubble to burst. The prices of assets

which had been used as collateral fell, and domestic lending declined. Under these circumstances

capital began to flee the region, putting pressure on the exchange rate pegs, which were eventually

abandoned. As a result of the level of foreign-currency indebtedness, currency depreciations led to

widespread bankruptcies and a slowdown in economic growth.


23

The crucial first link in this posited causal chain looks distinctly weak, in our judgement. A pegged

exchange-rate does, admittedly, offer an agent engaging in a foreign currency transaction a measure

of security and, as a result, encourages such transactions to take place. After all, that is its purpose.

However, whether exchange-rate pegging, in the absence of any other changes, would have been

sufficient to produce the crisis conditions witnessed in Asia so recently seems extremely doubtful.

The Miskyan account, on the other hand, places exchange-rate pegging in the setting of the much

broader policy shift implied by financial liberalisation. As we argued earlier, it is the wholesale

sweeping away of established financial practice intentionally brought about by financial liberalisation

that is the instrumental factor breaking down bankers natural risk aversion in a liberalised economy.

Furthermore, as also noted earlier (see sub-section 2.3 above), exchange-rate pegging actually figures

in the sequenced programme of reform advocated in some quarters as an underpinning for

liberalisation. It is therefore not a policy whose effects are to be considered in isolation, as the

fundamentalist view does. Rather, it should be examined in the context of the whole liberationist

philosophy which gives it its significance.

4.2 The panic view

Turning now to the panic view, as propounded, for example, by Radelet and Sachs (1998a, 1998b),

the essential argument maintains that although economic fundamentals were sound in South East Asia,

sudden and swift changes in expectations produced the impetus for the massive capital outflows that

occurred. The thesis draws on literature focusing on self-fulfilling expectations and hedging

behaviour in international capital markets (for example Obstfeld, 1996). According to this view,

capital outflows were the result of international investors irrational behaviour in the face of

unreasonably harsh fiscal and monetary policies prescribed by the IMF. Perhaps the bluntest

statement of the irrationality thesis is Deans (forthcoming) remark that Asian currency and equity

markets seemed simply to collapse of their own accord (p.1).

When the arguments supporters of the lender-panic thesis put forward to defend their position are

closely examined, it is clear that they amount to no more than loose, a priori, speculations. One line

of reasoning runs as follows: the crisis was unanticipated; there were no warning signals such as, for


24

example, downgrading by debt rating agencies; ergo, it must all have been due to irrationality on the

part of lenders. A related argument refers specifically to the crisis period itself: banks had, until the

crisis broke, been prepared to lend without any sort of government guarantee or insurance21 (see, for

example, Neely, 1999). Once it was underway, however, the affected countries experienced

widespread credit crunches, such that even viable domestic exporters, with confirmed sales, could not

obtain credit. Ergo lenders must have worked themselves into a state of irrationality. A final

suggestion is that the trigger of the crisis was the sudden withdrawal of funds from the region,

preceding any deflation of asset values. This, of course, could only be due to irrational behaviour on

the part of lenders.

It is not clear how seriously one should take theorists who normally identify totally with a

methodology that posits the individual as the unit of analysis but now invoke collective insanity as an

explanatory variable. Secondly, this `explanation' ends where it should begin: why did lenders, as a

group, suddenly fall victim to irrationality at this precise point in human history? Furthermore, it ill

becomes orthodox economists, whose other great touchstone is the so-called axiom of rationality, to

have any truck at all with this kind of argument.

The postulation of an abnormal episode of lender-irrationality implies a normal state of affairs in

which, as Harvey (1996) puts it, fundamentals are assumed to determine rates, while market

participants second-guess the fundamentals. But, as he goes on to argue, the weakness of this view is

that Exchange rate forecasting is then analogous to guessing a dice roll or predicting the weather; the

expectations have no effect on the actual outcome (p.574). In fact, as Glickman (1994) argues,

prices in financial markets are always determined by short-run expectations and systemic irrationality

is, as a result, consistent with the most clear-headed rationality on the part of individual participants.

On this point it is pertinent to note Minskys own view as reported in the Introduction to Fazzari and

Papadimitriou (1992):

In day-to-day conversations, it is clear that Minsky has little patience with

interpretations ... that tie predictions of endogenous instability to irrational

behavior... (B)ehavior at the micro level may be quite rational, even essential to

survival. Banks ... may be quite aware of increasing systemic fragility, but this

21 Note the contrast here with the moral hazard story reviewed in the immediately following section.


25

problem is a financial externality over which individuals agents have no control (p.8).

The panic, like the fundamentalist view is intended to account for the connection between banking

and financial crises, on the one hand, and currency crises, on the other, noted by Kaminsky and

Reinhart (1998, 1999). Financial crises happen as economies enter a recession after a prolonged

expansion in economic activity fuelled by credit creation and capital flows. In the Kaminsky and

Reinhart approach it is recognised that financial liberalisation takes place before banking sector crises,

which in turn precede currency crises, the latter worsening the former in a vicious spiral (1999, p.

473). Their explanation, with its emphasis on the normal behaviour of the economic cycle, seems at

first glance similar to our extended Minsky model. The differences, however, are critical, the most

important being that euphoric expansion is explained within our theoretical model and not merely

assumed as it is theirs.

4.3 Bail-out

The bail-out thesis contends that implicit or explicit deposit guarantees offered to, coupled with poor

supervision of, the banking system, produce a moral hazard problem of overlending (see, for

example, Krugman, 1998a). At the international level the interaction between capital flows and

financial liberalisation, leads to what McKinnon and Pill (1997) have labelled The Overborrowing

Syndrome.

According to this view, the willingness of the authorities to support failing financial institutions is a

key factor encouraging the latter to indulge in excessive risk-taking and speculative behaviour. This

phenomenon, it is suggested, is a prime source of the financial fragility and euphoria that in turn leads

foreign currency markets to lose touch with fundamentals. Prevent it and all will be right with the

(financial) world.

The bail-out theory may employ Minsky-like terminology, but it confuses the cause-and-effect

relationship he identifies and, we would argue, thoroughly misinterprets reality as a result. It is a

matter of historical fact that intervention by the state, in whatever sphere, has been prompted by prior

perceived failure in the unregulated environment. In the financial domain this has certainly been the

case: instability has always predated intervention. To imagine therefore that ending intervention


26

would be sufficient to bring about an end to instability would be like imagining that one could

completely cure a recurrently ill patient, who happened also to be suffering side-effects from certain

prescribed drugs, simply by taking him off all medication.

Since the raison d'tre of bail-out is as a policy response to prior perceived fragility within the

banking system, it is a matter of logic, therefore, that fragility cannot be regarded as simply a product

of government-induced imperfections. That said, it is important to note that Minsky was fully alert to

the issues raised by official support given to ailing financial institutions (see, for example, Minsky

1986, p.199). However, the conclusions he reached were very different from those of the modern

bail-out theorists: the support the authorities were on occasions obliged to offer to giant banks, he

remarked (ibid.) implies that (they) are too big for a non-interventionist, free-market economy.

4.4 Defects of the Asian model

A further argument holds the supposed problematic nature of the Asian Model, the core of which is

industrial policy, as squarely responsible for the South East Asian crisis. This view was stated

emphatically by The Economist: Most of the financial mess is of Asia's own making, and nowhere is

this clearer than in South Korea. For years, the government has treated the banks as tools of state

industrial policy, ordering them to make loans to uncreditworthy companies and industries (15

November, 1997; see, also Brittan, 1997). Various responses can be made to this argument. The

first is to point out that not all five countries discussed in this paper pursued activist industrial policies

with the same vigour (for details, see Jomo and Rock, 1998). Consequently, the contention that

industrial policy could not have been a major factor in causing crisis in the Southeast Asian

economies, because there was, simply, little of it around (Chang, 2000, p.9), seems eminently

justified. Furthermore, the argument can be turned on its head: the South East Asian problems can be

explained in part by the way the countries concerned backed away from the Asian Model.

That the Asian Model worked well is widely acknowledged internationally. For example, the World

Bank (1993) stated that, in the case of these economies, government interventions (have) resulted in

higher and more equal growth than otherwise would have occurred (p.6). Ever since the early

1990s, however, the model has been in retreat. Financial liberalisation has itself been partly

responsible. But other aspects of the model were independently being eclipsed. In the case of South


27

Korea, for example, it has been argued that it was the demise of industrial policy rather than its

perpetuation which drove the Korean economy into crisis (Chang et al., 1998, p.739). Indeed, It

was, for example, the end to the policy of investment coordination that allowed the proliferation of

duplicative investments in the key industries that fuelled the massive foreign borrowing between 1993

and 1997..... In addition, the demise of industrial policy, as well as the official end in 1993 to the

three-decade-old five-year-planning practice, led to the disappearance of the rational criteria

according to which government supports had been previously allocated (Chang, 2000, p.11). It thus

becomes empirically difficult to justify the argument that industrial policy, in the form of the Asian

Model, was responsible for the crisis. It is altogether more plausible to make the the reverse

argument, that pressures to back away from Model played their part in the crisis which ensued.

4.5 Cronyism

A view articulated in this journal and elsewhere by Wade (1998) and Wade and Veneroso (1998) is

that the source of the crisis in South East Asia was the extraordinarily high household savings

(encouraged by government policies), which led to unacceptably high debt-equity ratios. The latter

could only persist through mutually supportive and symbiotic relationships between government,

banking and industry - what neo-conventional commentators now call crony capitalism (Dean,

forthcoming, p.2). Their conclusion is that unrestricted inflows of foreign capital upset that symbiosis

and resulted in the crisis. The trouble with the cronyism thesis is that it leaves critical questions of

timing unanswered as Chiang (1998) has suggested, viz., (i) why cronyism produced catastrophe so

suddenly in 1997 and (ii) why it did not undermine the region's high growth rates long before. It is

also pertinent to ask why hard-headed foreign investors, supposedly so acutely conscious of

information asymmetries, committed such vast quantities of funds to the economies of the region so

contently and for so long a time.

Table 7Corruption Perception Index (Scale: 0 =very corrupt; 10 = very clean)

Country Period1988 - 1992 1996

Malaysia 5.10 5.32South Korea 3.50 5.02Thailand 1.85 3.33Indonesia 0.57 2.65Philippines 1.96 2.69

Source: Transparency International (1997); see also Chang (2000, p.30, note 12)


28

The nature and scope of cronyism must have changed before the crisis. As mentioned above, under

the discussion of the Asian Model, the dismantling of industrial policy, financial regulation and five-

year planning after the late 1980s reduced significantly the influence of the state in resource

allocation. The inference is that following the dismantling of controls and financial liberalisation, the

financial euphoria that ensued must have been associated with increased corrupt behaviour in both the

private and public sectors (Kindleberger, 1996, ch.5). But despite this expectation, in reality the

situation was very different. As reported in Table 7, the corruption perception index (CPI),

compiled by Transparency International, improved substantially in the period leading up to the crisis:

on a scale of 0 (very corrupt) to 10 (very clean) all five countries in our sample experienced

diminishing cronyism. We may conclude, agreeing with Chang (2000) and Radelet and Sachs

(1998a), that the credit ratings of all the economies that were about to be overtaken by the crisis were

actually improving over the period of the 1990s until its very eve.

4.6 Some general comments

As Krugman (1997) has acknowledged, the ... recent theoretical literature on self-sustaining currency

crisis does not do the job (Dean, forthcoming, p.1). It is the main thesis of this paper that our

extension of Minsky's closed economy model can do so comfortably. A comparison between these

rival views and ours suggests that, whilst there may be some common ground, the differences are

crucial. The most striking of these relates to the question of whether the source of the Asian crisis

was endogenous or exogenous and the related issue of the coincidence or otherwise of financial

liberalisation and financial crisis. A further crucial difference is that whilst at least some of the two

views just reviewed hold one group of actors or another, lenders, borrowers or the authorities, as

responsible for the crisis, our Minskyan thesis incorporates all of them into an endogenous

interpretation of the crisis. We may conclude therefore that ours is more general approach.

5 POLICY IMPLICATIONS

In his closed-economy analysis, Minsky emphasises the stabilising capabilities of `big government' (a

fiscal authority involved with large spending and tax programmes) and a big bank (a lender-of-last-

resort) (see, for example, Minsky, 1986, ch.13). The key role of big government is to influence

investment via business profits. Thus, in a downturn deficits are necessary to boost profits and the


29

big bank acts to prevent debt deflation. A further implication is explicit in the conclusion reached by

the World Bank (1993) that A policy of moderate financial repression at positive interest rates may

have boosted aggregate investment and growth in the HPAEs [High Performing Asian Economies] by

transferring income from depositors, primarily households, to borrowers, primarily firms (pp.238-

239).

These policy tools can, however, only be effective if accompanied by increased central bank

supervision of bank balance sheets. As Minsky (1988) puts it, rather than assuming a hands-off

position on the oversight of activities, the Federal Reserve will have to increase its role in guiding

financial behaviour along lines that contribute to stability (p.28). Specific policies to enhance central

bank supervision include higher reserve requirements and extensive use of discount window facilities

in ways that encourage hedge financing. Reforms that tilt the credit arrangements of industrial and

commercial firms toward hedge rather than speculative or Ponzi finance are desirable (Minsky, 1988,

p.28). For example, central bank provision of discount facilities may be predicated upon bank

purchases of less risky assets and lower asset-to-equity ratios.

This analysis, however, is only applicable in the case of a closed economy. In the open economy of a

financially globalised world, there is currently no counterpart to big government or the big bank,

but the implication of our analysis is that we must build in this direction. A revamped IMF/World

Bank may be a relevant suggestion. This could well take the form of Keyness (1980) suggestion of an

international clearing union. Davidson's (1992/93) and Arestis's (1999) proposals, the first

concerning the international scene and the second the European stage, are firmly based on Keynes

proposal. But such action could validate risky bank behaviour, and would need to be supplemented

by the open-economy counterpart of Minskys proposals to encourage hedge financing. Under

current conditions of a globalised drive towards financial innovation, the most readily available tool

for achieving this goal would seem to be capital controls.

This suggestion may be particularly relevant to the countries under scrutiny in this paper as well as

other developing economies. As we have argued above, relaxation of capital controls has contributed

substantially to the fragility of the financial system. The experience of countries like China and India

(where capital controls remain much in evidence) and which were little affected by the crisis, is very

telling.


30

We should also note that Malaysia reimposed wide-ranging capital controls on the 1st September

1998, allowing interest rates to fall and financial markets to recover, and that even IMF officials now

argue that capital controls may be the least damaging way out of this crisis. Mainstream economists,

too, argue in favour of capital controls (for example, Krugman, 1998c). UNCTAD (1998)

summarises the argument by suggesting that In the absence of global mechanisms for stabilising

capital flows, controls will remain an indispensable part of developing countries armory of measures

for the purpose of protection against international financial instability (1998, p.XI). Wittingly or not,

policy makers are coming round to an acceptance of the following prescription put forward by Minsky

(1977): Once a fragile financial structure exists, ... policy should try to induce behaviour that tends

to diminish the weight of speculative finance in the economy. This may very well require some

control over the liability structures and asset/equity ratios of giant corporations and banks (p. 152).

Not all official responses to the crisis have been inspired by such insight into its nature, however. For

example, in November 1997 the Indonesian government, on IMF advice, closed 16 unsound banks,

whilst the Thai authorities responded to the crisis by closing 50 finance companies and it is expected

that 5 of the country's 15 commercial banks will be allowed to fail. The Indonesian government's

bank closures, far from resolving the crisis, worsened the financial panic. Depositors and investors

responded by removing a further $2 billion in a flight to safety. In a leaked internal report, Indonesia

Standby Agreement: Review Under Emergency Financing Procedures (reported in the Guardian's

Notebook, 15 January, 1998), the IMF acknowledged this worsening, recognising that two-thirds of

deposits were actually shifted, and admitted that the authorities had had to pump in resources

equivalent to 5 per cent of GDP to prevent systemic collapse.

These arguments are reinforced by the fact that the Asian financial crisis emerged shortly after the

financial sectors of the countries affected, had been deregulated. This experience suggests that any

benefits of financial liberalisation would have to be weighted against the cost of increased financial

fragility. In fact, a number of contributors have in fact taken the view that some degree of financial

regulation is preferable to liberalisation in developing countries (see, for example, Caprio and

Summers, 1993; and Stiglitz, 1994; Hellman et al., 1996). In Asian countries liberalisation has

produced particularly high costs and low benefits because they have in any case achieved consistently

high levels of saving which are then re-cycled as loans to corporations and, furthermore, the latter are


31

closely linked with governments (Wade and Venoroso, 1998, p.5).

A major policy implication of orthodox analysis is that even more extensive liberalisation of finance,

international trade and the labour market as well as more privatisation is called for. However the

conflict between the principles underlying such free market prescriptions and the interventionist

practice inherent in, for example, the IMF-inspired $110 billion aid package for Asia seems to have

gone unnoticed. There is a strong case for suggesting that financial liberalisation is never a good

policy prescription, even in principle, because it necessarily makes the financial system more fragile.

Liberalisation has both a domestic aspect (removing interest rate and credit allocation controls), and

an external aspect (removal of capital controls). The absence of such controls inevitably removes

safeguards that might contribute towards preserving the stability of the financial system. Sound

supervision and other conventional prudential measures may help to alleviate fragility but can never

eliminate it. Thus, some form of `financial repression' may be necessary as Arestis and Demetriades

(1997) and Hellman et al. (1996) have argued, especially in the case of developing countries.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The South East Asian crisis began in early July 1997. Serious contagion of financial disturbance

across countries ensued, fuelled by the fact that the region's currencies were on the whole pegged to

the US dollar. Rigid in the face of changes in domestic conditions, these currencies became prime

targets for speculators once the latter took the view that they were overvalued. The currency crisis in

Thailand in the summer of 1997 (when the baht was devalued) spread almost overnight to Malaysia,

Indonesia and the Philippines. In November 1997 South Korea's currency also came under heavy

pressure from speculators. The won was devalued but the IMF had to be called in to help finance its

short-term debts. Several major firms in South Korea were declared insolvent and by mid-December

smaller firms were failing at the rate of 50 per day. Short-term interest rates soared to just over 30

per cent.

Minsky argued that high growth rates and low unemployment were threatened by the instability of the

financial system. The lesson to be drawn from recent financial crises in South East Asia, and


32

elsewhere, is that liberalisation intensifies this threat by adding further major stresses to the financial

infrastructure. Our thesis is that we have witnessed in South East Asia a financial crisis explicable in

classically Minskyan terms in which financial liberalisation has acted as the key euphoria-inducing

factor. The timing and features of liberalisation in the five countries are exactly right to account for

the state of fragility which evidently existed when the crisis broke and for the form that the crisis took.

Grabel (1995) has argued that under financial liberalisation economies are forced to bear a greater

degree of ambient risk than they would otherwise face. A Minskyan analysis gives us a clear insight

into how that comes about.

Whilst orthodox accounts of the Asian crisis are essentially a priori, a close examination of the course

of events which led to the crisis points to the very different conclusion that the fundamental problem

was not over- but under-regulation, as we have argued (see, also, Singh, 1998; Chang, 1998). Our

extension of Minskys work shows how dangerous an illusion it is to imagine that a governmental

retreat from involvement in the functioning of the financial system will do anything to enhance

stability. Our contention is that the Minskyan approach, by providing us with the tools to dispel such

illusions, offers original and general insights into the financial crises that have been so grave a feature

of the world economy in the last twenty years.

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Arestis y Glickman 1999 Financial Crisis in South East Asia