South And Southeast Asia
Introduction
The region under scrutiny happens to be among the most impoverished countries in the world, though allowing for so much growth that is has made them among the fastest growing countries in the world. The region with all this potential is South and Southeast Asia, and the countries holding 40% of the world's poor are Bangladesh, Thailand, Pakistan and India. How is it that South Asia has grown so much over the past decade with 35% of its men and 59% of its woman being illiterate? Or how is it that half a billion of the people in South Asia are living off less than a dollar a day? So much of the information I have found for this paper is hard to swallow, though I will try and tell it to you straight and in this sequence:
1. What is believed to be the beginning of the crisis that South Asia is faced with now?
2. Who is supporting growth and development in South Asia?
3. Through all this support, how much debt is being created?
4. What are individual weaknesses facing certain countries in South Asia?
5. Can these countries be of success in the long run?
The beginning of the crisis
Since July of 1997 Southeast Asia has been hit by an economic crisis of major proportion. The economic crisis was originally limited to Thailand's financial sector, when the central bank of Thailand devalued its currency, the baht. Like so many other currencies the baht had been pegged to the all so valuable U.S. dollar to help ensure stability. Though because of the major success in the U.S. economy the dollar has been seen as strengthening, leading many investors to feel that the baht and many of the other currencies pegged to the dollar were overvalued. Because of this created concern many of the investors fearing an unstable currency chose to exchange it's currency for dollars. As the confidence in the baht dwindled, companies operating in Southeast Asia scrambled to get rid of its currency as well. Thailand's central...
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