their exports as they saw their currencies appreciate in value as their exports now became more expensive. However, since they were drawing so many foreign loans, they couldn't float the exchange rate or else it would result in instant suicide. If their currencies depreciated sharply with the dollar then all of their loans would default. If they kept their currency pegged, they would see their total exports fall and a have a trade deficit. Maybe the loss of exports does not seem to be that great of a factor, but just about all of the Asian economies were built on exports. The one factor that perhaps played more of a role in the area of loss-of-competitiveness was the growing weight of China in the region. China became more and more of a factor in the area of exports, and began to "steal" the exports of other nations. The decision between China and the U.S. (when the U.S. gave China their "favored nation trading status") helped to increment the amount of total exports that China had. A Macro-Economic Overview Of the Asian Economies as a WholeThe Asian economies as a general whole suffered from some serious macro-economic problems- principles that are so clear that if a truly smart investor had looked at in the early '90s he would not have poured capital into the Asian market at the time. Although there were some really attractive aspects to the Asian model (such as incredibly high GDP growth throughout many years) there were some not so pretty aspects. Any person digging beneath the surface of the paper tigers would have found some serious structural concerns.Charts PageThe following pages contain charts to give a visual picture of how the economies were operating in the years leading up to the crash.______________________________________________________________________TABLE 1.0Current Account. NIA Definition.Current Account NIA (% of GDP)19901991199219931994199519961997Korea-1.24-3.16-1.70-0.16-1.45-1.91-4.82-1.90Indonesia-4.40-4.40-2....
