Eastern corporations are selling off real estate and subsidiary companies, resulting in layoffs. In the U.S., where Japan and South Korea are big investors, the places hardest hit so far are New York and Los Angeles, the two cities where Asian capital is most concentrated. Unemployment is not the only way U.S. workers will feel the shock waves. Most pension funds are heavily invested in the stock market, and a global crash beginning in Asia would wipe them out. And once the mightiest imperialist nation is thoroughly enmeshed in the turmoil, the storm will be unstoppable.
Asian workers resist.
So employees are pushed to toil faster, longer, and for less pay. In fact, belt-tightening by workers is one of the aims of the IMF bailout packages, not just an unfortunate byproduct. In Korea and many other places, workers have been resisting valiantly. Protests have forced governments and the IMF to back down on the harshest of the austerity measures and preserve money for social welfare programs. Their combativeness makes the labor movement stronger internationally.