crisis of the 1980s, the Asian crisis has resulted in millions of newly unemployed, whose desperation will pull wages down world-wide. Like the debt crisis of the 1980s, the Asian crisis will turn entire countries into export platforms, where human labor is transformed into the foreign exchange needed to repay Asia's $ 600 billion debt. In just this past year, Thai rice exports rose by 75 per cent, while Korea has managed to boost its exports and accumulate $ 41 billion in reserves for debt service. These figures, notes the World Bank, indicate that people in Asia "are working harder and eating less ".
Finally there are the governments themselves, the ultimate prizes to be won. It is no accident that conditions imposed by the IMF, with their emphasis on altering state employment, welfare and pension systems, their insistence on reforming the legal and political systems of the target countries, entail a major loss of national sovereignty. Through IMF negotiations, national governments are transformed into local enforcement agents of transnational corporations and banks. IMF officials are quick to point out that the usurped governments often were not paragons of democracy and virtue. This of course is true. But the motives of the IMF are themselves profoundly undemocratic, intended to seize sovereignty and fix the rules of the game and to protect and expand, at all cost the wealth of the international financial elite.
Deposit Banks 'Foreign Assets
All countries
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995 (I)
6,793.4
6,753.5
6,780.4
7,239.0
7,907.9
8,568.9
Developing countries
1,672.47
1,710.26
1,721.40
1,821.60
2,030.93
2,098.60
Asia
868.69
884.06
891.33
928.57
1,068.13
1,135.63
Deposit Banks 'Foreign Liabilities
All countries
1990
...
