winning_with_technology

and the Philippines. Currencies of these countries were
devalued by half in a few months, and they had to pay more
than double for their foreign loans. Many businesses went
bankrupt. It took more than three years for these countries
to recover from the crisis.
Asian countries gained experience from the
financial crisis in 1997, and were very conservative in both
borrowing and covering foreign exchange. Central Banks
and governments were in tight control of inflation, therefore
these countries were not much affected by the economic
crisis. I, along with many economists, were very surprised
to see the financial crisis occur in the US and spread to
Europe in 2007-2008 as these countries were renowned as
the experts in economics and finance, but they repeated
the mistakes of Asian countries in 1997. Latin America and
Asia suffered a financial crisis partly because they had
no experience and relied on the US$ in developing their
economies. But the subprime mortgage crisis in the US
happened because the Central Bank of America stimulated
the economy through the policy of low interest rates and high
112 Winning with Technology