East Asian financial crisis and the IMF - Chasing shadows

The east Asian crisis has thrown up several questions. Was it a crisis which was deeply embedded in the structural policies and th political economy of these countries? Was the economic appraisal of these countries validated by the information which the IMF had gathered? Could it be that the IMF prescriptions exacerbated the malady, and thereby needlessly raised the costs of adjustment? Was it unambiguous that the Fund's advice was dispassionate and was not biased by the hidden agenda of the foreign economic policy of the US in particular and the OECD in general? An attempt is made in this paper to offer answers to these several riddles, some based on facts now unearthed, some on recent changes in the Fund programmes and some inferential logic. Towards the end,certain issues having a bearing on the future of the international monetary system will be raised, particularly in the context of the new ideas currently in the air about the reform of the Fund.