KINOSHITA:
I consider that largely domestic policy mistakes made by policy-makers in such countries as Thailand and Indonesia invited the crisis, although irrational investors and speculators may have ignited the fire later. For example, Taiwan has not been "contaminated" by the crisis, as Taiwan has enough foreign reserves to protect from being attacked. Japan may be seen as a country not having been beaten by irrational speculators because of its huge capital account surplus and abundant foreign reserves, although it has some structural problems. And we have had a lesson that it is not clever to link a nation's currency to a single currency, i.e., the U.S. dollar. For example, Thailand and Indonesia made a mistake in virtually linking their currencies to the U.S. dollar.

KINOSHITA:
Basically, I can be optimistic about Asian economies. It is clear that the financial crisis in the past few years emerged because international investors and multinationals lent and invested excessively and Asian entrepreneours received them without appropriate care. It may be regarded as a market failure, but they did not lend or invest excessively in such regions as Africa or Central America. Now all parties concerned in Asia must have recognized the reasons for the failures. Then they can surely correct their mistakes to lead to full economic recovery. In fact, the basic economic conditions of those countries are still valid, namely, a relatively high savings rate, good work ethics, a relatively improved primary/secondary educational system. Besides, their weakened exchange rates right now have strengthened their international competitiveness, leading to a large increase in their exports.