Banking and currency crisis recovery: Brazil's turnaround of 1999

Of the many countries that suffered exchange rate crises in the 1990s, Brazil and Korea recovered most rapidly. This article analyzes the Brazilian recovery. William Gruben and John Welch focus on the freedom that Brazilian bank health gave to the central bank to pursue a postcrisis monetary policy that would settle markets, reestablish price stability, and encourage investment and the return of foreign capital. Brazilian bank health was not an accident; it reflected not only bank responses to precrisis changes in government regulations, but also to large precrisis interest rate increases associated in part with Brazil's efforts to defend its currency.Banks and banking - Brazil