Word: mahathir
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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian prime minister Mahathir wanted to teach the West a lesson about economics. Instead, East Asia's most irrepressible autocrat is showing Americans how not to manage a sex scandal -- hard though that may be to imagine...
...Yongchaiyudh, a former army chief turned politician, wasted billions propping up ailing finance companies owned by political cronies. When the currency crumbled under the pressure, he chose to throw good money after bad in a futile attempt to avoid a humiliating devaluation. Malaysia's cantankerous, 72-year-old Premier Mahathir Mohamad, strongman for 17 years, ran a one-man show with total control over the country's economic machinery. In his obsessive search for respect from the West, he spent lavishly to build the biggest and the tallest--the world's tallest skyscraper, the highest flagpole, the tallest control tower...
When the country's currency and stock market came crashing down of its own weight, Mahathir blamed outsiders--a cabal of speculators, Jews and enemies of the developing world. To replenish the treasury, he asked the rich to pawn their jewelry overseas and bring the money back to Malaysia. To cut a huge foreign bill for food, he asked people to plant vegetables in their front yards. Last week Mahathir took the bold step backward of withdrawing Malaysia from the global economy, sealing off its currency from outside trade and sacking the pro-market Finance Minister. Absurdly, he also found...
More ominously, the much heralded march of market economies and democratization is stalling. Russia is tempted to return to a command economy and strongman rule. The authoritarian impulses of leaders like Malaysia's Mahathir are showing the ugly side of the "Asian values" that were touted as a ticket to prosperity and order. Instead of standing tall, the world's leaders seem hunkered down, adopting timid defensive measures rather than the forceful steps each nation needs. In every country there are very difficult domestic politics that confine leaders, and globalization surely makes life more difficult for statesmanship. To some extent...
...Depression -? and that led to World War II. As Russia melts and Asia founders, the West?s credibility is waning fast, along with some cherished ideas, both political and economic, about the way to run a modern planet. But what works must come before what should work, and as Mahathir shakes his fist at the West and talks holy war, what he may not realize is that pragmatists everywhere ?- bankers, speculators, barbarians, maybe even George Soros -? are rooting for him. If only for a little while...