Newspaper Article

Muslim-majority nations like Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt and even Malaysia have seen their currencies depreciate and come under pressure in the recent past. Turkey and Egypt have had to increase domestic interest rates substantially to ease the exchange rate pressure. Indonesia, too, had to raise rates, albeit of a much lower magnitude. The choice of an exchange rate policy - whether pegged, free floating or managed - depends on the trade-off preference. Fixed or pegged exchange rates offer stability, but this has to be traded off against the lack of independence in monetary policymaking. A freely floating currency has the advantage of providing full flexibility in policymaking, but has to be traded off against the lack of exchange rate stability. Faced with these trade-offs between fixed and free floats, many countries chose to be in between the two, with managed floats.

In a book aptly titled 'This Time Is Different', Rogoff and Reinhart, two prominent economists, show that every single financial crisis over the last 800 years has had a single root cause - excessive debt. It appears that what begins as borrowing for the funding of development infrastructure can, as it builds, lead to a spiralling of debt and financial crisis. There is a circular and reciprocal relationship between debt, leverage, vulnerability and financial distress. This applies to all borrowers, governments, corporations or other entities.