The financial crisis in East Asia

The East Asian financial crisis has proved far more contagious than anyone imagined likely when devaluation of the Thai baht in July 1997 gave the first indication that something was wrong, and the implications it could have for the entire world financial system mean that any response must involve more than just the nations affected directly. Nobuyuki Ichikawa says Japan, as the locomotive for the Asia‐Pacific region, must move quickly to achieve an early economic recovery by increasing domestic demand and reforming its financial system, in order to increase imports from East Asia and shore up the weak yen. He suggests that one effective measure might be for the yen to become the key currency for Asia in lieu of the dollar. Ichikawa works for the Bank of Japan and was seconded to IIPS in 1995.