Despondency and fear hung in the air at last year's IMF/World Bank meeting. The contrast with the prevailing mood of self-congratulation and complacency in Washington last month could scarcely be more stark. The oft-repeated view was that the worst of the emerging market crisis is past, that major emerging-market economies in Asia and Latin America are either well into recovery or poised for it and that growth in the developed economies of Europe and Japan will take the pressure off the US to be the world consumer of last resort.
October 01, 1999