An IMF bailout failed to rescue that nation from a depression and the other dominoes fell in rapid succession. Malaysia was next followed by Indonesia, South Korea and Singapore. More IMF bailouts were launched but failed after takeoff. In the financial massacre some Asian stock markets suffered losses that were greater than the Wall Street crash of 1929. Almost overnight the Indonesian middle class evaporated, wiping out that country's standard of living gains of the past thirty years.
Indonesian police have orders to shoot looters on the spot as famine menaces the new urban poor.
An army general has warned of anarchy and collapse unless food can be imported, an unlikely prospect with no money on hand. The conditions in Asia continue to worsen. Back in the U.S. a bumper harvest is piled wherever space can be found for it. The bottom has fallen out of farm commodity prices, in some cases paying less than half of what it cost the farmers to produce them. Meanwhile, the politicians haggle over whose fault it is that so many American farmers are going down the tubes.