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b'Hit by the 1997\\u20131998 Asian financial crisis, economies in Southeast Asia adopted unconventional monetary policy measures to ride out the financial storm, and were the stronger for it, teaching a few unorthodox lessons to developed economies left reeling by the global crisis a decade later.\\n\\nCentral banks were initially at a loss about what to do, as share prices and asset values plunged, currencies and exports weakened, and investment capital fled\\u2014much as some central banks in advanced economies were during the global financial crisis of 2008. \\n\\nIn Asia, Thailand chose to recapitalize struggling banks, while in Hong Kong, China, the strategy was to buy falling stocks on the share market, which it later sold carefully back into the market, distributing the profit to every taxpayer as a bonus of some $1,000.\\n\\nPublic funding of bank recapitalizations in Thailand and the extraordinary purchase of equities in Hong Kong, China have elements of the unconventional monetary policy known as quantitative easing, which has received so much attention in major advanced economies in recent years. \\n\\nDuring the Asian crisis, Western economists were skeptical about the macroeconomic benefits of government purchases of risky assets. \\n\\nSince 2008, they have been far more sympathetic to the view that financial markets may not be efficient and may at times be destabilizing if left to themselves. \\n\\nRead the transcript\\nhttp://bit.ly/2zFdkno\\n\\nRead the post on ADBI\\u2019s blog\\nhttps://www.asiapathways-adbi.org/2017/09/unconventional-monetary-policy-in-the-asian-financial-crisis/ \\n\\nAbout the authors\\nTamim Bayoumi is a deputy director at the International Monetary Fund.\\n\\nJoseph Gagnon is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.\\n\\nKnow more about ADBI\\u2019s work on monetary policy\\nhttp://bit.ly/2hw4DRs'