The East Asia Summit and regional financial cooperation     

One of the priority area for regional cooperation at the East Asian Summit (EAS) has been finance. At the last EAS Leaders’ summit in Hanoi last year this area was given special attention along with education, energy, disaster management and avian flu prevention.       (East Asia Forum)

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Asia’s reticence costs it a shot at IMF power 
  

The world's power brokers lined up candidates to head the IMF while Asia held back, and its silence means it will probably have to wait five more years to break Europe's grip on the top spot. (Reuters)

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Asian financial arrangement: Regionalism vs. multilateralism  

On May 4, 2011, the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO), an independent surveillance and regional monitoring office, was officially established during the 14th ASEAN+3 Finance Ministers’ Meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, which was held during the 44th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank.  AMRO is crucial to the operation of the Chiang Mai Initiatives Multilateralization (CMIM). This is a positive development after the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. However, technical coordination with multilateral institutions, especially the IMF, is needed so that regionalism will not be in conflict with nor irrelevant to multilateralism. (The Jakarta Post)

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Asian solidarity   
   

It is a matter of course that prevention is better than cure. But an Asian financial safety net, designed to fight off future financial crises, cannot be relied to prevent them. Instead, it may be used to take action only when a financial crisis is confirmed to have dealt a blow to a country. (The Korea Herald)

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Affordable delays for the Chiang Mai Initiative?

While the worst of the Global Financial Crisis may have passed, in East Asia the economic pressures are still mounting. Regional economies are struggling with inflation, asset bubbles and now increasingly volatile exchange rate movements. One mechanism which might aid the regional economies to coordinate their exchange rate policies, to fend off currency speculation and assist with reigning in increasingly problematic ‘hot money’ flows is the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation (CMIM). (East Asia Forum)

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