Gekko

MY sinister international speculator friends are resigned to losing the world’s Miss Congeniality contests, but their image in South East Asia has taken a sharp whack after the recent round of devaluations of local currencies against the dollar. These price cuts brought down the value of the Thai baht by over 20 per cent against the dollar and the Malaysian ringgit by around 5 per cent. After years of hearing sycophantic talk about the Asian miracle, Asian values, and the genius of Asian leaders, the Asian politicians found it impossible to believe that they had ever made any Asian mistakes. Since a villain had to be found, the global fixed-income arbitrageur (as we prefer to think of ourselves) was dragged forward and given the part.

The most shrill comments have come from Mohammed Matathir, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and he decided that evil should be anthropomorphized in the person of George Soros, who conveniently is a billionaire hedge-fund manager. Soros had earned Matathir’s particular ire because, the PM says, the speculator was punishing Malaysia for publicly opposing the military junta in Burma. Matathir referred to Soros and his colleagues as rogues and criminals who were seeking freedom for speculators and anarchists.

JD

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John Dizard

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MY sinister international speculator friends are resigned to losing the world’s Miss Congeniality contests, but their image in South East Asia has taken a sharp whack after the recent round of devaluations of local currencies against the dollar. These price cuts brought down the value of the Thai baht by over 20 per cent against the dollar and the Malaysian ringgit by around 5 per cent. After years of hearing sycophantic talk about the Asian miracle, Asian values, and the genius of Asian leaders, the Asian politicians found it impossible to believe that they had ever made any Asian mistakes. Since a villain had to be found, the global fixed-income arbitrageur (as we prefer to think of ourselves) was dragged forward and given the part.

The most shrill comments have come from Mohammed Matathir, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and he decided that evil should be anthropomorphized in the person of George Soros, who conveniently is a billionaire hedge-fund manager. Soros had earned Matathir’s particular ire because, the PM says, the speculator was punishing Malaysia for publicly opposing the military junta in Burma. Matathir referred to Soros and his colleagues as rogues and criminals who were seeking freedom for speculators and anarchists.