Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, we can't save the Asian economies if they won't take primary steps to help themselves, the way…”

“Well, first of all, we can't save the Asian economies if they won't take primary steps to help themselves, the way Mexico did. You remember, we loaned Mexico some money, and they paid back early with interest, and we made about $500 million because they took tough steps to restore economic growth and create jobs, raise incomes, and get their financial house in order. That's the first and most important thing the Asians have to do. But in order to make it, they also need the backup of the International Monetary Fund and a plan designed to deal with the particular problems of each country, and then the U.S. and Japan and Germany and the rest of the Europeans to stand behind that to say, if necessary, we will put together a package to really restore confidence. In most of these Asian economies, the problem is the financial system and people can't pay back their loans or investors take their loans--when their loans are repaid, investors take the money and go somewhere else. What's that got to do with America? Well, every day now in some of our newspapers you can see what's happening in the Asian stock markets and the Asian currency markets. What happens when a country's currency drops? When a country's currency drops, it doesn't have as much money in dollars, and therefore it can't buy as many American exports. A big part of America's economic growth since 1993 has occurred from exports, a big part of that from exports to Asia. If the value of all their money goes down, they can't keep buying our exports. And that hurts us. Also, if the value of their money goes down, everything they sell in other places in the world is all of a sudden much cheaper, so they can push us out of those markets. Mr. Lehrer. Cheaper than our stuff?”