The Gathering Support for Capital Controls.

The article traces the evolution of the East Asian financial crises. One may well be on the verge of a world slump. The Thai crisis of July 1997 soon became the Southeast Asian crisis, then in October turned into the Asian crisis and has now become the Great Asian Depression. The sudden intensification of insecurity and poverty that confronts hundreds of millions of people in Asia makes this one of the worst economic calamities of the twentieth century. Spending on education, health care and social welfare is shrinking rapidly, creating gaping "social deficits." The abrupt shift to negative growth in what had been the world's fastest-growing region has sent a contractionary wave coursing through the world economy, setting of a cycle of events in other places. Commodity prices have fallen to their lowest levels in more than 20 years. From Venezuela to Chile, Canada to New Zealand, Nigeria to South Africa to Russia and places in between, the low prices make it hard to sustain economic growth and public spending. Commodity producers are experiencing downward pressure on their exchange rates against the U.S. Dollar.