Thailand And Foreign Currency Charting

Thailand, long considered one of the region's most robust economies, faces a five-year supply of residential and commercial real estate, the result of a wild lending and construction boom at a time when growth indicators seemed to point only upward.

The country's foreign currency exchange chart exports are sharply down compared with last year, and the Thais are facing their first budget deficit in a decade. Economic growth this year, by some estimates, is expected to cool to 3.2 percent. While that might invite envy in Europe or the United States, it is sharply off from a pace of nearly 9 percent two years ago.

In Bangkok today, the suggestion of an I.M.F. rescue sent the Stock Exchange of Thailand index up more than 5 percent. Since the Thai baht was cut loose to float at market rates, stocks have risen 29 percent. After the request for I.M.F. aid was announced, the governor of the Bank of Thailand, who had been orchestrating the defense of the baht, resigned.

The I.M.F. help, if it is granted, is likely to carry with it a range of belt-tightening requirements for the Thais -- including reining in lending, allowing foreign banks greater access and, most important, cutting back Government spending. Some economists predicted that a recession could follow.

In Washington, a spokesman for the I.M.F. said it had dispatched about half a dozen officials, who arrived in Bangkok over the weekend, but that no determination on assistance had been made. “We do have a staff team there, and we are discussing policy actions with the Thai authorities,” the spokesman said. Analysts, and bankers at the Union Bank of Switzerland, have estimated that Thailand will need as much as $20 billion in credits. When asked about those estimates, another spokesman at the I.M.F. said it was too early to set such a figure.

In a sense, a measure of economic hubris has overtaken Southeast Asia, and the face of the region has reflected it. Old cities have been transformed into stretches of mirrored towers, new centers of commerce and finance.

Roads are clogged with the sclerosis of growing wealth, private cars and motorcycles. Airports, once genteel single-runway, cozy-terminal affairs, are woefully inadequate and vast new airports are either muddy construction sites or still on the drawing boards. Growth seemed unstoppable. Investment from the United States and Europe surged, as did the appetites of the industrial nations for the products churned out of factories across the region, from semiconductors to running shoes, silk to tires.

Now, the euphoria has dissipated as the global currency traders have decided that some of the shine on Asian economies glittered over growing patches of rust. A spreading pattern of current-account deficits, wild overspending on property that sent prices in many countries spiraling upward, and a yearlong slowdown in exports convinced many traders that the region's currencies, beginning with the Thai baht, were worth a lot less than they were being traded for.