A world recession in the offing?

A world recession in the offing?

As a layman in economics, I am confused about the recent
brouhaha over the depreciation of the rupiah, the tight money
policy, the floating foreign exchange rate, the skyrocketing
interbank overnight rate of 160 percent per year, the deposit
rate of 60 percent and others.

I believe that the chain reaction triggered by the
depreciation of the rupiah can be foreseen. I think that this
will happen not only in Indonesia but all over the world.

Newsweek magazine, in its Sept. 8 edition, reported that
recession phobic giant companies in the U.S. are preparing for
the worst. They are thinking in term of how to overcome a world
recession.

I was five years old when the depression in the early 1930s
broke out. My parents told me that the resulting unemployment led
to social unrest and other undesirable situations in society.

At the end of the decade, John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath
based on John Steinbeck's novel starring a young Henry Fonda,
showed how a whole family loaded all their belongings into an old
jalopy and traveled from East to West America in search of a
better labor environment.

A. DJUANA

Jakarta