ned and widened. According to Henny Sender, writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review,
Ten weeks after Thailand was forced to float the baht, what began as an adjustment in exchange-rate regimes across the region has become an economic crisis which has taken on increasingly frightening, xenophobic overtones (Sender, 1997, 42).
At about the same time, the manager of the Thailand affairs of an international bank gave a vivid characterization of the situation as it appeared to him: "Say the amount of nonperforming loans in the system is about 1.4 trillion baht," ($40.6 billion) he begins. "Then let's assume not all of that is totally bad debt." He pauses for thought and a look of horror comes over his face. "What if half of it is? That will cost the country 700 billion baht, almost 15 percent of GDP" (Vatikiotis, 1997b, 90).
Soon thereafter, James Mitchell, the Thailand strategic specialist for Solomon Brothers in Singapore gave his opinion that "there's complete political paralysis [in Thailand]. Foreign investors might as well sit tig
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