cover image Meltdown: Asia's Spectacular Boom and Devastating Bust

Meltdown: Asia's Spectacular Boom and Devastating Bust

Claffcrd & Engardac, Mark Clifford, Clifford & Engardio. Prentice Hall Press, $28 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-7352-0141-5

The recent crumbling of Asian economies has captivated American financial experts, if not American consumers. In the modern world of interconnected economic systems and global business, this captivation is more than mere curiosity; the Asian economy directly affects economic conditions in this country. Clifford (Troubled Tiger) and Engardio, Business Week journalists with significant experience in Asia, set out to explain the region's recent fall in fortunes. In a methodical progression of steps, specific countries, from Korea to Hong Kong to Malaysia, are put under their analytical scope. They outline recent history since WWII, from political turmoil (""Asia showed an extraordinary ability to use crisis as a catalyst for needed change"") to the growing development of infrastructure and real estate and the growth of heavy industry and export markets, all the conditions that made the region ripe for rapid growth. Profiles of personalities, from dictators to creative industrialists, add a human face to the otherwise broad perspective. Eager interference and speculation from the outside world, hot to participate in the Asian miracle, were also constant spurs of too-rapid growth. Then came Thailand's devaluation of the baht, its official currency. From there, a comeuppance spread throughout the Asian region, made weak by mismanagement, overbuilding and a host of other economic ills. The authors make candid observations about human error, flawed political structures, greed and international monetary policy. There are lessons to be learned and a hopeful message that some of the participants in the Asian debacle have, indeed, learned a lesson, even though the authors, at the end of this incisive and illuminating study, are not holding their breath. (Nov.)