Chalmers Johnson described the result in blunt terms: “The funds easily raped Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, then turned the shivering survivors over to the IMF, not to help the victims, but to insure that no Western bank was stuck with non-performing loans in the devastated countries.” A European Asia expert, Prof. Kristen Nordhaug, summed up the Clinton Administration policy towards East Asia in 1997. Clinton had developed a major economic strategy, using the new National Economic Council, initially headed by Robert Rubin, a Wall Street investment banker. East Asian emerging markets were targeted for an offensive. “The Administration actively supported multilateral agencies such as the IMF…to promote international financial liberalization,” Nordhaug noted. “As…the strategy of targeting East Asian markets (was) in place, the U.S. Administration was in a strong position to take advantage of the financial crisis to promote liberalization of trade, finance and institutional reforms through the IMF.”

The impact of the Asia crisis on the dollar was notable. The Bank for International Settlements General Manager, Andrew Crockett, noted that while the East Asian countries had run a combined current account deficit of $33 billion in 1996, as speculative hot money flowed in, “1998-1999, the current account swung to a surplus of $87 billion.” By 2002 it peaked $200 billion. Most of that surplus returned to the U.S. in the form of Asian central bank purchases of U.S. Treasury debt, in effect, financing Washington policies. Japan’s Finance Ministry had made a futile effort to contain the Asia crisis by proposing a $30 billion Asian Monetary Fund. Washington made clear it was not pleased. The idea was quickly dropped. Asia was to become yet another province of the dollar realm through the IMF. Treasury Secretary Rubin euphemistically termed it America’s “strong dollar policy.”