A FRESH VIEW TWENTY YEARS ON: THE ASIAN FINANCIAL DEBACLE AND THE MINSKYAN LESSONS LEARNT BY THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

Abstract

In this paper we shall sketch the anatomy of the Asian financial crisis which erupted twenty years ago. In order to answer the question of how and why this crisis developed and what went wrong in its aftermath we embrace the Financial Instability Hypothesis of the seminal post-Keynesian economist Hyman P. Minsky. The real causes of the Asian crisis were endogenously developed euphoric expectations that followed financial liberalisation and deregulation and propelled the creation of an inverted capital structure and financial fragility. After the initial crisis and subsequent abrupt reverse of investor’s sentiments, the International Monetary Fund intervened and multiplied financial difficulties that strangled regional economies. Fortunately, gradually and in line with the Minskyan approach to financial crises, the International Monetary Fund learned from its Asian mistakes, and starting from the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008 and the succeeding financial crisis in Eastern Europe in 2009, dropped its opposition to capital controls and its support for austerity measures in crisis-hit emerging market economies.