There has been many financial crises over the past century, yet few of those provided much of a warning that they were about to hit.  It only becomes clear after the fact. We then begin to hear speeches on what there was to learn and how to avert any future crisis, until the next crisis arrives in a slightly different form. Philosopher George Santayana, once wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” History has proven this to be true.

We now have a situation brewing in Turkey, yet there are many in the financial media who are already quick to write off the current collapse in the Turkish Lira as contained to Turkey and that the size of Turkey’s GDP makes it less of a threat. Yet, Turkey’s GDP is double the size of what Thailand’s was during the Asian crisis. Therefore, in order to understand the current crisis in Turkey, it is worth looking back at the Asian crisis of 1997.

In 1997, just before the crisis hit, Thailand’s economy was booming. Banks were lending freely. The resulting large quantities of credit that became available generated a highly leveraged economic climate, which led to excessive real estate speculation, and pushed up asset prices to an unsustainable level. An economic expansion, that nobody wanted to end, was in full force. In fact, the Thai central bank kept the currency artificially high, fuelling the speculative bubble.

I guess you could say that there were signs of a brewing crisis if you choose to focus on them. Banks began lending against the security of the buildings that didn’t have too much of a chance at being filled. Muang Thong Thani was a housing estate built for 700,000 people and became a victim of the coming crash.

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