| Headline: Lending less than meets the eye Source: Euromoney Date: September 2001 Author: James Smalhout
The size of these programmes continues to astound: $58.4 billion for Korea, $36.1 billion for Indonesia and $17.2 billion for Thailand all in one fell swoop when the Asian crisis hit bottom. The IMF next moved to spearhead a $41.5 billion package for Brazil’s showdown with speculators in 1998-99. And then officials unveiled a $40 billion deal for Argentina last January. These seem like big numbers, but there’s a very different story in the fine print. “The money that matters needs to be incremental and freely disposable,” points out Michael Gavin, director of Latin American research at UBS Warburg. And that’s why the funds actually available to calm a crisis can turn out to be a mere fraction of what was announced. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||