Word: mahathir
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammed blames it all on the Jews. The rich Western economies. The foreign currency speculators. And of course on George Soros, a rich Western Jewish foreign currency speculator whom Mahathir calls a "criminal" and "a moron." Mahathir believes the IMF, far from wishing the current crop of East Asian leaders a speedy recovery from their current economic crises, engineered Indonesian president Suharto?s fall and would like very much to bring about his own. So it shouldn?t have come as too much of surprise when the defiant Dr. Mahathir threw the switch Tuesday...
...Mahathir's plan, of course, baldly flouts all the IMF's ?- and nearly everyone else?s -- current wisdom on saving Asia. According to their formula, a package of stopgap loans and high internal interest rates can protect the currency and attract foreign capital in the short term by restoring investor confidence. Follow that with swift and painful economic reforms, and recovery should be imminent. But for Mahathir, flipping the Western economic establishment the bird is part of his plan?s allure. The West, Mahathir insists, fears a ascendant Asia, with its large Muslim populations and strong governments, and is gleefully...
...Currency controls aren't anathema to Westerners for nothing: They?re very vulnerable to abuse and corruption; they require massive bureacracies to regulate; and the sheer complexities of a government's implementation of them tends to scare away capital. Because Mahathir?s plan places tight limits on importers and exporters as well as Malaysians who travel abroad, it also means regulatory headaches for the governments of neighboring countries. Currency controls have traditionally resulted in stagnation and recession, and tend to move countries farther away from the reforms they will eventually need to prosper in today?s unforgiving global economy...
...without advocates. The IMF?s prescription has so far been a spectacular failure; at this dismal point, what does Asia have to lose? MIT's Paul Krugman wrote in FORTUNE that such an admittedly desperate "Plan B" could be Asia's only way out, and when he learned Mahathir had apparently followed his advice, Krugman even wrote an open letter to the prime minister advising him of the many sinkholes along the path ahead...
...words may have come from a Boston economist, but the inspiration clearly came from the country Mahathir touts as the East's answer to U.S. world dominance: China. Ironically, it has been China that has been the West's great consolation in this crisis: By refusing to devalue the yuan, even as slowing growth threatens to derail her own emergence as a first-world economy and nation, China has kept a bad situation from getting much worse. Strict currency controls -- its invisible Great Wall against the briefcase-wielding Western barbarians -- have allowed China this bravery...