To what extent does the East Asian experience provide us with a viable model of economic development? This tract seeks to answer this through a careful analysis of the long-term development of the East Asian economies and their recent crisis. The tract shows thee contradictory implications of the process of industrialisation and the problems of unregulated finance which makes liberalized economies extra sensitive to the slightest ripple in investor sentiments. To understand the specificities of the East Asian experience, the tract looks carefully t the histories of crises in other parts of the world, and provides a powerful critique of the IMF response to them.