Word: indonesian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...secret that come Millennium Eve, computers everywhere may be crashing faster than the Indonesian rupiah. Last week U.S. officials admitted that they've fixed only 35% of the most vital federal mainframes and won't have time before Dec. 31, 1999, to prevent all the 5,100 remaining machines from deciding it's 1900, not 2000. "Financial transactions could be delayed, airline flights grounded and national defense affected," warns the General Accounting Office's Gene Dodaro. Not to mention anyone caught in an elevator...
This is the second year of living dangerously for Indonesian President Suharto. During the first, in 1965, he coolly rode out a coup, followed by massacres that killed 500,000 people, and emerged as the country's leader. In this one, economic ruin threatens to topple him. Yet as the rupiah plunges into worthlessness, the nation's debts go unpaid, the International Monetary Fund suspends emergency aid, and students riot in universities, he blithely has himself reappointed to his seventh five-year term as President...
...have led to a $43 billion International Monetary Fund bailout, but the resulting austerity measures have sent the cost of basic necessities in the world's fourth most populous country soaring, and last week rioting broke out on several islands. The anger comes from 90% of the 202 million Indonesians who are Muslims and is largely directed against the nation's ethnic Chinese, who account for only 4% of the population but control about 70% of the economy. So long as the unrest is contained by Indonesian strongman SUHARTO, the Pentagon doesn't think an emergency evacuation will be required...
...Indonesian President Suharto has only one reason for pegging the Indonesian rupiah to the U.S. dollar, says TIME Business Correspondent Bernard Baumohl: to bail out his relatives and cronies who have been quietly plundering the nation for decades. Suharto will likely set the rupiah-per-dollar rate at around 5,000 -- almost twice its current value, predicts Baumhohl. That gives his friends an opportunity to pay off their dollar debts in overvalued rupiah. "They'll save a fortune," says Baumhohl...
...promised to buy those rupiah with U.S. dollars--at the inflated price." Indonesia's reserves of foreign currency, vital to a nation's economic health, will quickly shrink. And traders, smelling more trouble, will dump even more rupiah, guaranteeing an economic meltdown. "In no time," says Baumohl, "the Indonesian government is bankrupt, and the economy collapses...