The East Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 was sharp but short and quickly cured once the IMF realized that feckless governments were not the problem and then United States Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin parachuted the New York banks into South Korea’s economy. The collapse, not long after, of the dot-com bubble in 2000-2001 brought on not a depression but merely an output decline so mild as to barely warrant the name “recession.”
1997 至1998年发生的东亚经济危机激烈而短暂，一旦国际货币基金组织认识到软弱的政府不成其为问题，然后美国财政部长罗伯特·鲁宾又把纽约的银行空降到韩国的公司里，危机很快就化解了。不久之后，2000年到2001年互联网泡沫的破灭带来的不是萧条，而只是一场产量下滑，程度之轻，刚够用得上“衰退”这个词。