Rupiah woes, who is to blame ?

Rupiah woes, who is to blame ?

The 1997-1998 regional monetary crisis saw the rupiah exchange
rate to the dollar at Rp 17,000, and up to Aug. 29 it reached
nearly Rp 11,800. If further uncertainty prevailed, meaning the
recent concrete measures taken by the government and the monetary
authority did not help strengthen the rupiah, monetary crisis
chapter two would be inevitable.

Calls from members of the House of Representatives and
observers to immediately reshuffle the Cabinet, particularly
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's (SBY's) economic team, have
aggravated the situation and seem to be unfair. There's a strong
relationship between both SBY's economic team and the Central
Bank (BI), the latter being the nation's monetary authority. Such
calls should have also been addressed to it.

The recent drama could have been avoided had the BI done
something. Take for, example, one of the first things the U.S.
Fed governor Alan Greenspan did when he took leadership of the
Federal Reserve. He put together a plan to follow in the event of
a market emergency (The Jakarta Post, Aug. 29), meaning that
crisis management became his hallmark.

Just two months into the job, he needed it as the stock market
dropped 508 points on Oct. 19, 1987 (Black Monday) the biggest
one-day loss since the Great Depression, sending shock waves
through financial markets at home and abroad. What did he do
then? He quickly reassured Wall Street that the central bank
would supply all the credit necessary to keep the nation's
financial system afloat.

During the recent crucial period, though to no avail, only
Coordinating Minister for the Economy Aburizal Bakrie and
Minister of Finance Yusuf Anwar visited the Jakarta Stock
Exchange to help invigorate the slumping financial market. The BI
governor and his deputies were nowhere to be found, and instead
it was SBY who made a visit to the BI's office to discuss the
matter.

M. RUSDI, Jakarta