The Pandemic Is Making The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis Looks Like a Joke

The first international crisis that I remember growing up is the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It was an eventful year as my family moved from Kuala Lumpur to Kuantan as well. Plus a very bad haze crisis.

My parents were government doctors so our impact was minimal. It's just that imported stuffs got more expensive.

I do hear some business closed down and mass retrenchment. Scholarship students also can't go overseas and those returning didn't get the job promised.

However the crisis was regional and people could go to other region to seek for opportunities. Money from other regions also could flow in seeking undervalued investments.

More importantly, the crisis was 'virtual' - in the sense that it is mostly a numbers game. This pandemic on the other hand put real physical barriers all over the world - not just between nations but up until between sub-districts.

That is the real killer - no movement means no value created. Even though there's the Internet the physical world still creates the majority of the value.