Impact of the recent financial crisis to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand Essay

Impact of the recent financial crisis to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Korea - Essay Example The crisis left devastating impacts on the economies of the four countries (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Korea) as discussed below. The 2007/2008 financial crisis left the four countries with huge financial debts borrowed from the developed economies (Lin, 2014). Generally, most south East Asian states including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Korea had borrowed huge loans before the crisis to rebuild their economy after the Asian crisis that had happened previously. The crisis reappeared in a time when the countries were struggling to repay the loans borrowed for economy reconstruction after the Asian crisis. This placed a heavy burden on respective countries thereby retarding their development progress. These states are still paying the loans acquired before financial crisis set foot in Asia. The financial crisis hiked the cost of living to more than double in the four countries. up to date, the residents in the four countries go through very difficult times because job opportunities are still few and the available jobs are underpaying (Klein & Shabbir, 2007). Furthermore, foreign investors returned back to their countries and the domestic investment has performed poorly since then. Basically, low investments (both domestic and foreign investments) in a country results in inadequate job opportunities and consequently, high poverty levels. The crisis weakened the local currencies of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Korea which caused these nations a huge fortune in terms of time and resources to reconstruct their economies. Poor performance of the local currencies made exports cheap wealthy nations seized the opportunity to develop their economies (Jensen, 2010). Moreover, depreciation of local currencies negatively affected local investment due to dumping by foreign investors. Additionally, depreciation of local currencies in the respective states during and after the crisis led to less demand of domestic products