country affecting the others -- was another feature.

There were also issues of financial structure. The IMF

strategy is designed for countries that have a basically

sound structure -- it's a strategy of buying time and

waiting for confidence to return. There were also technical

issues: you had this bank-centred finance in Asia and very

high levels of internal leverage. Now Mexico went through a

period of extremely high interest rates -- 75 per cent for

quite some time --- but many Mexican companies were able to

weather them because they did not have such a high degree of

leverage or a dependence on short-term internal loans.

Indonesia or South Korea, for example, couldn't do that. So

basically, everything that went right for Mexico went wrong

for Asia.

Q: So what's your radical prescription?

A: It's something I hate to recommend, but I think Asian

countries need some breathing space. They need the ability

to reflate without having to constantly worry about

satisfying capital market investor confidence. That means

delinking the domestic capital market from the external

capital market. It certainly means debt moratoria and

probably currency controls on a temporary basis.

Q: Would you also be suggesting this for an economy like

Singapore, where domestic demand is relatively small?

A: No. Singapore is a kind of odd man out here -- as, in

different way, is Hong Kong. But Singapore would be a major

beneficiary of a strategy along these lines, because it is a

major service provider to surrounding economies. The prime

candidate is Indonesia, which is playing a waiting game with

no light at the end of the tunnel. That would be the most

extreme case.

Q: What's your worst-case scenario for Asia?

A: Gosh, for Indonesia, the worst-case scenario is

virtually bottomless. An absolute worst case would be

radical political unrest and five million boat people. But

leaving that aside -- and that's only amateur political

futurology -- I think the worst case is a kind of

early-1930s scenario in which the non-Japan Asian countries

try desperately to adhere to financial orthodoxy and at the

same time fail to generate the political credibility that

will bring back investor confidence. At the same time, Japan

slides deeper into a slump, and we see all the output

declines of this past year repeated.

Indonesia's slump in the last year is possibly the worst

that any country not at war has ever had. It appears to be

just about the same as the US in 1932. But what happened in

1932 wasn't in isolation; it was part of four consecutive

years of catastrophe. So that would be my worst-case

scenario: that in a few years, we would end up with output

in South-east Asia being 30 to 40 per cent below what it was

in 1997, with who knows what consequences.

克鲁格曼：亚洲成就并非奇迹

美国麻省理工学院教授及著名的经济学家克鲁格曼(Paul

Krugman)，曾于1994年在《外交事务》发表一篇名为《亚洲奇迹的神

话》的文章。范文网www.qc99.com他在这篇具争论性的文章里否定了“亚洲奇迹”，并认

为亚洲无法持续长期的经济增长。克鲁格曼上个月来新加坡时，针对

整顿亚洲经济危机，提出了的激进建议与看法。以下是他接受《商业

时报》访问的摘要。

问：你在《外交事务》的文章里指出，亚洲的增长基本上是大量

投资造成，但这个增长为什么能够持续这么久——接近30年?