title: Gab (social network)

text: In February 2022, the Associated Press wrote that "Offensive content is easy to find on Gab. A search turns up user names featuring racial epithets, as well as antisemitic screeds, neo-Nazi fantasies and homophobic rants." In June 2022, the Stanford Internet Observatory said that "While sites such as Parler and Gettr generally cater to a broader base of right-wing users, the far-right platform Gab hews more toward an openly white Christian nationalist demographic."


title: Gab (social network)

text: Michael Edison Hayden, an open-source intelligence analyst and investigative reporter on extremism and disinformation, opined in a "Gizmodo" interview in October 2018: "Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gab, will get angry when people... call his site a white nationalist website or an alt-right website but anyone who spends time on it knows that it's a haven for extremists... Violent white supremacist groups like Patriot Front and Atomwaffen Division organize out in the open on Gab. Users frequently call for the murder of women, Jews and other minorities on Gab, and are rewarded with likes and reposts... Dylann Roof is treated as a hero by many Gab users". Hayden noted that Gab was "rife with" content similar to that posted by Robert Bowers', with many users posing in his support using the hashtag #HeroRobertBowers. In August 2019, director of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, Matthew Feldman, said of Gab's stance on free speech that "'free speech' in Gab's context has too often meant 'free to engage in hate speech and incitement' with minimal curation by site moderators or, it seems, owners". In March 2021, Nathalie Van Raemdonck, a doctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels who researches platform architecture, said of Gab's launch that "It's not necessarily that Gab rewarded the best content, or punished the worst, but does it reward what the group thinks" and that "Because the people on the platform were already terrible, they needed engaging conversations to stimulate each other, so it became a circlejerk to the bottom". Van Raemdonck also noted of Gab that "The fact that they portrayed themselves as a free-speech platform attracts a certain crowd".


title: Gab (social network)

text: Milo Yiannopoulos, an active user of Gab who joined after being deplatformed from Facebook and Twitter, complained in September 2019 about the low number of users on Gab, Parler, and Telegram. He wrote on Telegram that, after losing his large fanbases on Facebook and Twitter, he was having difficulty sustaining his career due to the relatively small number of users on the alternative social networks. He described Gab as "relentlessly, exhaustingly hostile and jam packed full of teen racists who totally dictate the tone and discussion".


title: Gab (social network)

text: In March 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott condemned Gab, stating "anti-Semitic platforms like Gab have no place in Texas".


title: Gab (social network)

text: In October 2021, pro-Trump Republican pundit Bill Mitchell ran a poll on Gab asking if people would attend a Christian church where the pastor uses the word "nigger" in their sermons. More than 2,000 voted and nearly two-thirds answered "Yes", prompting Mitchell to say on Gab that "As you can see from this poll so far, there are A LOT of racists on Gab" and that "It's not just a small noisy group." He also complained of having to block "over 100 accounts a day.", claimed that big accounts on Gab are "flatlining because of all the hate speech", and encouraged people to join Gettr, a conservative social media platform. Mitchell called on Torba to ban racist users on Gab "or Gab will never be taken seriously by the general public." In response, Torba said "Go over to dopey Jason Miller's Chinese billionaire-funded AI-censored hugbox for Israel-first RINO losers if you want a safe space to shout into the wind of bot accounts and Chinese nationals posing as Americans that make up the community over there". Mitchell later announced that he would leave Gab before changing his mind, saying "I think I'll just stay on Gab forever", "But from here on out, no more Mr. Nice Guy."


title: Gab (social network)

text: Gab is one of a number of alternative social network platforms, including Minds, MeWe, Parler, and BitChute, that are popular with people banned from mainstream networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and Instagram. Deen Freelon and colleagues writing in "Science" characterized Gab as among alt-tech sites that are "dedicated to right-wing communities", and listed the site along with 4chan, 8chan, BitChute, and Parler. They noted there are also more ideologically neutral alt-tech platforms, such as Discord and Telegram. Joe Mulhall of the UK anti-racism group Hope Not Hate has categorized Gab among the "bespoke platforms" for the far-right, which he defines as platforms which were created by people who themselves have "far-right leanings". He distinguishes these from "co-opted platforms" such as DLive and Telegram, which were adopted by the far-right due to minimal moderation but not specifically created for their use.


title: Gab (social network)

text: Gab was founded by CEO Andrew Torba and CTO Ekrem Büyükkaya and the company was incorporated on September 9, 2016.


title: Gab (social network)

text: Torba, who described himself in 2016 as a lifelong "conservative Republican Christian", was previously removed from the Y Combinator alumni network in 2016 because of harassment concerns, starting when he used "build the wall" on Twitter alongside a screenshot of a post by a Latino startup founder that read: "being a black, Muslim or woman in the USA is going to be very scary". He also made a post on Facebook that said "All of you: fuck off. Take your morally superior, elitist, virtue signaling bullshit and shove it" and "I call it like I see it, and I helped meme a President into office, cucks". Until 2016, Torba was registered as a Democrat, although he voted Republican in presidential elections. In 2017, Torba described himself as a "cultural libertarian", a classical liberal, and an "American nationalist patriot". As of 2021, Torba says that he lives in a "forest in Pennsylvania", where he is plotting a "Silent Christian Secession". As of 2021, Torba has a policy of "not communicating with non-Christian and/or communist journos". In April 2021, Torba endorsed accelerationism, a term used by white supremacists to mean intensifying social conflicts and collapse. In 2022, Torba described himself as a Christian nationalist.


title: Gab (social network)

text: Utsav Sanduja later joined Gab as COO. Sanduja left the company in June 2018. In an interview with "ABC News", Sanduja said that his wife, who works at a synagogue, had been doxed and received death threats while he worked at Gab: "apparently some of her personal information was found out and my family and I went through quite a lot of abuse, a systemic targeting from really vicious people, and honestly it just took a toll on us mentally". On October 28, Büyükkaya announced his resignation from Gab the day after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, citing "attacks from the American press" that "ha[d] taken a toll on [him] personally". In November 2020, former Facebook software engineer Fosco Marotto joined Gab as CTO.


title: Gab (social network)

text: In December 2016, Gab was headquartered in Austin, Texas. In September 2017, Gab moved its headquarters to Pennsylvania. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, as late as March 2018, stated that Torba operated Gab out of a WeWork coworking space in Philadelphia. A WeWork spokesperson said that Torba had become a member under his own name, not Gab's, and that his time there had been brief. In late October 2018, a Gab spokesperson told "The Philadelphia Inquirer" that Gab was no longer based in Philadelphia. As of January 2019, Gab is headquartered in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania.


title: Gab (social network)

text: Gab earns revenue through premium subscriptions, donations, and affiliate partnerships. Gab has been refused service by several payment processors including PayPal and Stripe, causing the site to at various times rely on payments by postal mail, cryptocurrency, and "obscure" payment processors to receive payment for its subscription service. From 2017 to 2018, Gab raised $2 million from the sale of speculative securities through the crowdfunding platform StartEngine. Gab sought approval from the SEC for a Regulation A exempt offering of $10 million in 2017, but it remained pending until March 2019 when Gab withdrew the request. In a 2020 SEC filing, Gab said that "We may not be able to obtain adequate financing to continue our operations" and that Gab has yet "to earn a substantial profit or substantial operating revenue", putting into question the company's "business prospects".


title: Gab (social network)

text: Gab originally did not use advertising, describing itself as an "ad-free social network". The site began offering a subscription service for Gab named "GabPro" in mid March 2017. In November 2017, Gab launched a new tier of subscriptions called "GabPro Premium", which was targeted at content creators who wished to charge a subscription fee for their content and collect tips.


title: Gab (social network)

text: Gab lost more than $350,000 in the period from its foundation through June 30, 2018. The company relied on the online crowdfunding broker StartEngine starting in 2017. In July 2017, Gab started an investment project which met its goal of $1.07 million on August 19, 2017. In February 2018, Gab announced that it had raised $4.8 million and was planning a $10 million initial coin offering (ICO). From 2017 to 2018, Gab raised $2 million through StartEngine.


title: Gab (social network)

text: Gab reported in a December 2018 filing that removal from PayPal and Stripe following the 2018 Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting had caused a 90% drop in its subscription revenue. Following its removal, the site relied on mail and cryptocurrency for subscription payment processing.


title: Gab (social network)

text: Gab partnered with the "obscure" Second Amendment Processing for credit card payment processing in January 2019, but removed credit card payment options in March of the same year. This removal came after an SPLC investigation published in early March 2019 found that Thomas Michael Troyer, founder of Second Amendment Processing, had been convicted of financial crimes in 2007.


title: Gab (social network)

text: The SPLC reported in January 2019 that the company's Regulation A exempt offering of $10 million had been pending approval by the SEC since 2017. Two analysts contacted by the SPLC commented that this might suggest that "the SEC has concerns about allowing the sale to go forward". Heidi Beirich noted an unusual lack of communication records with the SEC regulators in Gab's financial filings, unlike those of similar companies. In a March 2019 SEC filing, Gab "abruptly" withdrew its request for stock sales, explaining that "[the company] has decided to seek other capital raising alternatives". Torba did not respond to SPLC inquiries regarding the withdrawal.


title: Gab (social network)

text: As of August 2019, purchasing the GabPro subscription gave users the ability to upload videos of larger file sizes, the option to be verified on Gab, and a free email address from Gab's email service. Gab had previously launched affiliate marketing with Virtual Private Network Service Providers and Gab had also previously launched its own merchandise.


title: Gab (social network)

text: In September 2019, Gab began showing "promoted posts" from affiliate partners. Users who purchase the GabPro subscription do not see the promoted posts.


title: Gab (social network)

text: On June 19, 2020, Torba claimed that him, his wife, and Gab had been "blacklisted" by Visa for "promoting hate speech". Gab was also deplatformed from PayPal.


title: Gab (social network)

text: In response to user growth on Gab during the 2020 presidential election in November, Torba claimed in an email to Gab users on November 11 that "Gab isn't growing because of 'celebrity' endorsements, sponsorships, or big paid advertising budgets, but rather from the most powerful form of advertising on the planet: word of mouth".


title: Gab (social network)

text: As of 2021, purchasing the GabPro subscription gave users "access to additional features such as the ability to apply for verification, schedule posts, get their own Gab TV channel and set posts to automatically delete after a specified period of time."


title: Gab (social network)

text: A report from June 2022 by Stanford Internet Observatory found that the deplatforming of users on social media sites following January 6, 2021 led to a surge of income which helped keep Gab afloat.


title: Gab (social network)

text: In 2016, Gab's color theme was a minimalist combination of black text on white panels with pink hashtags and usernames. Pro users had a contrasted top bar in dark blue. The interface displayed messages in a Twitter-like vertical scroll timeline with an option to upvote or downvote each post. The site also aggregated popular posts and trending topic hashtags. As of 2017, users could sort comments and posts in a subject by time or score. Default biographies for new users displayed a randomly chosen quotation about the importance of free speech. Users also had the option to "mute" other users and terms. , Gab's user interface was similar to that of Twitter, having a dashboard in the middle of the page with trending content on the left and menus on the right. As of 2021, posts on Gab are limited to 3,000 characters.


title: Gab (social network)

text: In early 2017, the option to downvote posts was temporarily removed from Gab, with the company's then-COO Sanduja explaining that they were removed due to them being used to troll and to harass women, and also stated that: "there were a lot of social justice warriors and members of the far left coming into our site essentially trying to start a brouhaha". In July 2017, Gab implemented a system where people who downvoted others (through spamming) would have their accounts downvoted as well and their ability to leave downvotes would be revoked. As of 2019, Gab uses a scoring system, which allows users with more than 250 points to downvote posts, but users must "spend points" in order to do so.


title: Gab (social network)

text: In 2018, the default profile picture for new users to the site featured NPC Wojak, a meme popular on far-right websites.


title: Gab (social network)

text: A frog named "Gabby" was Gab's logo from 2016 to 2018. The logo has been compared to Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character used by the alt-right. Torba denied that the frog logo was a reference to Pepe and stated that the logo was inspired by Bible verses ( and ) and various other traditional symbolic meanings. Sanduja said that the frog was meant to symbolize the "revenge against those who went against mainstream conservative voices on the internet". As of September 2018, the frog logo is no longer used.


title: Vera Wang

text: Vera Ellen Wang was born June 27, 1949 in New York City to Chinese parents who emigrated to the United States in the mid-1940s. Her mother, Florence Wu (Wu Chifang), worked as a translator for the United Nations, while her father, Cheng Ching Wang (Wang Chengqing), a graduate of Yanjing University and MIT, owned a medicine company. Wang has one brother, Kenneth.


title: Vera Wang

text: Wang began figure skating at the age of eight, training under Peter Dunfield and Sonya Klopfer in Denver during the summers and with the Skating Club of New York during the rest of the year. While in high school, she trained with pairs partner James Stuart, and competed at the 1968 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. She was featured in "Sports Illustrated" "Faces in the Crowd" in the January 9, 1968 issue. When she failed to make the U.S. Olympics team, she entered the fashion industry. Wang continues to enjoy skating, saying, "Skating is multidimensional".


title: Vera Wang

text: Wang attended Friends Seminary, graduated from Chapin School in 1967, attended the University of Paris, and earned a degree in art history from Sarah Lawrence College.


title: Vera Wang

text: In 1968, Wang was presented as a debutante to high society at the International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf Astoria New York.


title: Vera Wang

text: Wang was hired to be an editor at "Vogue" immediately upon graduation from Sarah Lawrence College, making her the youngest editor at that magazine. She stayed at "Vogue" for 17 years, leaving in 1987 to join Ralph Lauren, for whom she worked for two years. At 40, she resigned and became an independent bridal wear designer.


title: Vera Wang

text: Wang has made wedding gowns for public figures such as Hayley Williams, Ariana Grande, Chelsea Clinton, Karenna Gore, Ivanka Trump, Campbell Brown, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Victoria Beckham, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Avril Lavigne, Hilary Duff, Khloe Kardashian, and Kim Kardashian. Wang started off as being best known for her elegant wedding dresses. Wang's evening wear has also been worn by Michelle Obama.


title: Vera Wang

text: Figure skaters who have worn costumes designed by Wang at the Winter Olympic Games include Nancy Kerrigan (1992 and 1994), Michelle Kwan (1998 and 2002), Evan Lysacek (2010), and Nathan Chen (2018 and 2022). Wang was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2009 for her contribution to the sport as a costume designer. She designed the uniforms worn by the Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders.


title: Vera Wang

text: On October 23, 2001, her book "Vera Wang on Weddings" was released. In June 2005, she won the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Womenswear Designer of the Year. On May 27, 2006, Wang was awarded the André Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award from the Savannah College of Art and Design.


title: Vera Wang

text: Wang's evening wear has been worn by stars at many red carpet events, including Viola Davis at the 2012 Academy Awards, and Sofia Vergara at the 65th Emmy Awards.


title: Vera Wang

text: In 2006, Wang reached a deal with Kohl's, a chain of department stores, to produce a less expensive line of ready-to-wear clothing exclusively for them called Simply Vera.


title: Vera Wang

text: Forbes placed her the 34th in the list America's Richest Self-Made Women 2018, her revenues rising to $630 million in that year.


title: Vera Wang

text: On September 10, 2019, after a sabbatical of 2 years during which she had presented her collections only via films, Vera Wang returned to the New York Fashion Week runway for her Spring/Summer 2020 fashion show, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of her brand. The show received very positive reviews, with Godfrey Deeny describing it as a "notable collection by one of the few New York designers with a truly distinctive fashion DNA", while Bridget Foley presented Wang's creations as "Beautiful, seriously designed clothes, presented with gutsy panache". However, the show was marred by several major footwear malfunctions, especially during the finale when four models fell down, including Fei Fei Sun, who fell twice in a row, leading chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman to state that "In 2019, no woman should be tortured by what she wears".


title: Vera Wang

text: In 1990, she opened her own design salon in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City that features her trademark bridal gowns. She has since opened bridal boutiques in New York, London, Tokyo, and Sydney and has also expanded her brand through her fragrance, jewelry, eyewear, shoes, and homeware collections.


title: Vera Wang

text: "White by Vera Wang" launched on February 11, 2011, at David's Bridal. Prices of the bridal gowns range from $600 to $1,400. In 2002, Wang began to enter the home fashion industry and launched The Vera Wang China and Crystal Collection, followed by the 2007 release of her diffusion line called Simply Vera, which are sold exclusively by Kohl's.


title: Vera Wang

text: In spring 2012, Wang teamed up with Men's Wearhouse to offer two tuxedo styles available in both the retail and rental areas of their inventory.


title: Vera Wang

text: In June 2012, she expanded in Australia with the opening of "Vera Wang Bride Sydney" and her first Asian flagship store "Vera Wang Bridal Korea", helmed by President Jung Mi-ri, in upmarket neighborhood Cheongdam-dong in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.


title: Vera Wang

text: In a 2013 interview with CBS, Wang described her transition from journalist to businesswoman as "painful, and not only that, I have no choice. So I think when you start there's a certain innocence because of that freedom, and as you evolve you begin to see the parameters of what you can and can't do. So I make decisions that are very tiny that will affect an hour of work, I make decisions that will impact the lives of the people that work for me. It's in fashion as well, micro work, a centimeter of proportion and then it's macro to see what a vision is on the red carpet."


title: Vera Wang

text: In June 1989, Wang married investor Arthur P. Becker in an interfaith Baptist and Jewish ceremony. They have two daughters, both of whom were adopted. In July 2012, the couple announced their separation.


title: Vera Wang

text: In a third season episode of the TV series "The West Wing", entitled 'The Black Vera Wang', an evening gown by Wang is pivotal to a storyline involving threats made against the White House Press Secretary, C. J. Cregg. In the other TV series "The Newsroom" also written by Aaron Sorkin, Mac also talked about wearing dresses made by Vera Wang for her wedding ceremony.


title: Vera Wang

text: In the TV series "Gossip Girl", Blair Waldorf wore a Vera Wang wedding dress. Wang appeared in a cameo in season 5 episode 11.


title: Vera Wang

text: In the TV series "Sex and the City", Charlotte York found Wang's wedding dress to be the perfect wedding dress and wore it for her wedding to Trey MacDougal.


title: Vera Wang

text: In the film "Sex and the City", Vera Wang was among the bridal gowns Carrie Bradshaw wore in her "Vogue" photo shoot. In the film "Bride Wars", Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson wore custom-made Vera Wang gowns.


title: Vera Wang

text: Also in "Revenge", Victoria Grayson, played by Madeleine Stowe, wears a steel gray Vera Wang mermaid gown in her second wedding with Conrad Grayson (Henry Czerny). The dress was actually shown in black at Wang's Fall 2012 show.


title: Vera Wang

text: In "The Simpsons" episode, "My Big Fat Geek Wedding", Nelson Muntz refuses to egg Edna Krabappel with a canola oil balloon per Bart Simpsons' orders as she runs out on her wedding to Seymour Skinner, because her dress is a Vera Wang. He eggs Skinner with it instead after he chases after her.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal contract or part of a contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict access to. Doctor–patient confidentiality (physician–patient privilege), attorney–client privilege, priest–penitent privilege and bank–client confidentiality agreements are examples of NDAs, which are often not enshrined in a written contract between the parties.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: It is a contract through which the parties agree not to disclose any information covered by the agreement. An NDA creates a confidential relationship between the parties, typically to protect any type of confidential and proprietary information or trade secrets. As such, an NDA protects non-public business information. Like all contracts, they cannot be enforced if the contracted activities are illegal. NDAs are commonly signed when two companies, individuals, or other entities (such as partnerships, societies, etc.) are considering doing business and need to understand the processes used in each other's business for the purpose of evaluating the potential business relationship. NDAs can be "mutual", meaning both parties are restricted in their use of the materials provided, or they can restrict the use of material by a single party. An employee can be required to sign an NDA or NDA-like agreement with an employer, protecting trade secrets. In fact, some employment agreements include a clause restricting employees' use and dissemination of company-owned confidential information. In legal disputes resolved by settlement, the parties often sign a confidentiality agreement relating to the terms of the settlement. Examples of this agreement are The Dolby Trademark Agreement with Dolby Laboratories, the Windows Insider Agreement, and the Halo CFP (Community Feedback Program) with Microsoft.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: In some cases, employees who are dismissed following their complaints about unacceptable practices (whistleblowers), or discrimination against and harassment of themselves, may be paid compensation subject to an NDA forbidding them from disclosing the events complained about. Such conditions in an NDA may not be enforceable in law, although they may intimidate the former employee into silence.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: It is also known as a confidentiality agreement (CA), confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA), secrecy agreement (SA), or non-disparagement agreement.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: A unilateral NDA (sometimes referred to as a one-way NDA) involves two parties where only one party (i.e., the disclosing party) anticipates disclosing certain information to the other party (i.e., the receiving party) and requires that the information be protected from further disclosure for some reason (e.g., maintaining the secrecy necessary to satisfy patent laws or legal protection for trade secrets, limiting disclosure of information prior to issuing a press release for a major announcement, or simply ensuring that a receiving party does not use or disclose information without compensating the disclosing party).


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: A bilateral NDA (sometimes referred to as a mutual NDA or a two-way NDA) involves two parties where both parties anticipate disclosing information to one another that each intends to protect from further disclosure. This type of NDA is common for businesses considering some kind of joint venture or merger.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: When presented with a unilateral NDA, some parties may insist upon a bilateral NDA, even though they anticipate that only one of the parties will disclose information under the NDA. This approach is intended to incentivize the drafter to make the provisions in the NDA more "fair and balanced" by introducing the possibility that a receiving party could later become a disclosing party or vice versa, which is not an entirely uncommon occurrence.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: A multilateral NDA involves three or more parties where at least one of the parties anticipates disclosing information to the other parties and requires that the information be protected from further disclosure. This type of NDA eliminates the need for separate unilateral or bilateral NDAs between only two parties. E.g., a single multiparty NDA entered into by three parties who each intend to disclose information to the other two parties could be used in place of three separate bilateral NDAs between the first and second parties, second and third parties, and third and first parties.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: A multilateral NDA can be advantageous because the parties involved review, execute, and implement just one agreement. However, this advantage can be offset by more complex negotiations that may be required for the parties involved to reach a unanimous consensus on a multilateral agreement.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: A non-disclosure agreement can protect any type of information that is not generally known. However, non-disclosure agreements may also contain clauses that will protect the person receiving the information so that if they lawfully obtained the information through other sources they would not be obligated to keep the information secret. In other words, the non-disclosure agreement typically only requires the receiving party to maintain information in confidence when that information has been directly supplied by the disclosing party. However, it is sometimes easier to get a receiving party to sign a simple agreement that is shorter, less complex and does not contain safety provisions protecting the receiver.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: Deeds of confidentiality and fidelity (also referred to as deeds of confidentiality or confidentiality deeds) are commonly used in Australia. These documents generally serve the same purpose as and contain provisions similar to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) used elsewhere. However, these documents are legally treated as deeds and are thus binding, unlike contracts, without consideration.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: Use of NDAs are on the rise in India and is governed by the Indian Contract Act 1872. Use of an NDA is crucial in many circumstances, such as to tie in employees who are developing patentable technology if the employer intends to apply for a patent. Non-disclosure agreements have become very important in light of India's burgeoning outsourcing industry. In India, an NDA must be stamped to be a valid enforceable document.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: In Britain, in addition to use to protect trade secrets, NDAs are often used as a condition of a financial settlement in an attempt to silence whistleblowing employees from making public the misdeeds of their former employers. There is law allowing protected disclosure despite an NDA, although employers sometimes intimidate the former employee into silence despite this.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: NDAs are very common in the United States, with more than one third of jobs in America containing an NDA. However, the United States Congress passed the Speak Out Act in 2022, which prohibits NDAs with regard to sexual harassment and assault, and the legislation currently awaits President Joe Biden's signature.


title: Non-disclosure agreement

text: In some states, most notably California, there are some special circumstances relating to non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses. California's courts and legislature have signaled that they generally value an employee's mobility and entrepreneurship more highly than they do protectionist doctrine.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Piezoelectricity (, ) is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials—such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA, and various proteins—in response to applied mechanical stress. The word "piezoelectricity" means electricity resulting from pressure and latent heat. It is derived from the Greek word ; "piezein", which means to squeeze or press, and "ēlektron", which means amber, an ancient source of electric charge.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The piezoelectric effect results from the linear electromechanical interaction between the mechanical and electrical states in crystalline materials with no inversion symmetry. The piezoelectric effect is a reversible process: materials exhibiting the piezoelectric effect also exhibit the reverse piezoelectric effect, the internal generation of a mechanical strain resulting from an applied electrical field. For example, lead zirconate titanate crystals will generate measurable piezoelectricity when their static structure is deformed by about 0.1% of the original dimension. Conversely, those same crystals will change about 0.1% of their static dimension when an external electric field is applied. The inverse piezoelectric effect is used in the production of ultrasound waves.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: French physicists Jacques and Pierre Curie discovered piezoelectricity in 1880. The piezoelectric effect has been exploited in many useful applications, including the production and detection of sound, piezoelectric inkjet printing, generation of high voltage electricity, as a clock generator in electronic devices, in microbalances, to drive an ultrasonic nozzle, and in ultrafine focusing of optical assemblies. It forms the basis for scanning probe microscopes that resolve images at the scale of atoms. It is used in the pickups of some electronically amplified guitars and as triggers in most modern electronic drums. The piezoelectric effect also finds everyday uses, such as generating sparks to ignite gas cooking and heating devices, torches, and cigarette lighters.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The pyroelectric effect, by which a material generates an electric potential in response to a temperature change, was studied by Carl Linnaeus and Franz Aepinus in the mid-18th century. Drawing on this knowledge, both René Just Haüy and Antoine César Becquerel posited a relationship between mechanical stress and electric charge; however, experiments by both proved inconclusive.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The first demonstration of the direct piezoelectric effect was in 1880 by the brothers Pierre Curie and Jacques Curie. They combined their knowledge of pyroelectricity with their understanding of the underlying crystal structures that gave rise to pyroelectricity to predict crystal behavior, and demonstrated the effect using crystals of tourmaline, quartz, topaz, cane sugar, and Rochelle salt (sodium potassium tartrate tetrahydrate). Quartz and Rochelle salt exhibited the most piezoelectricity.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The Curies, however, did not predict the converse piezoelectric effect. The converse effect was mathematically deduced from fundamental thermodynamic principles by Gabriel Lippmann in 1881. The Curies immediately confirmed the existence of the converse effect, and went on to obtain quantitative proof of the complete reversibility of electro-elasto-mechanical deformations in piezoelectric crystals.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: For the next few decades, piezoelectricity remained something of a laboratory curiosity, though it was a vital tool in the discovery of polonium and radium by Pierre and Marie Curie in 1898. More work was done to explore and define the crystal structures that exhibited piezoelectricity. This culminated in 1910 with the publication of Woldemar Voigt's "Lehrbuch der Kristallphysik" ("Textbook on Crystal Physics"), which described the 20 natural crystal classes capable of piezoelectricity, and rigorously defined the piezoelectric constants using tensor analysis.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The first practical application for piezoelectric devices was sonar, first developed during World War I. In France in 1917, Paul Langevin and his coworkers developed an ultrasonic submarine detector. The detector consisted of a transducer, made of thin quartz crystals carefully glued between two steel plates, and a hydrophone to detect the returned echo. By emitting a high-frequency pulse from the transducer, and measuring the amount of time it takes to hear an echo from the sound waves bouncing off an object, one can calculate the distance to that object.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The use of piezoelectricity in sonar, and the success of that project, created intense development interest in piezoelectric devices. Over the next few decades, new piezoelectric materials and new applications for those materials were explored and developed.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Piezoelectric devices found homes in many fields. Ceramic phonograph cartridges simplified player design, were cheap and accurate, and made record players cheaper to maintain and easier to build. The development of the ultrasonic transducer allowed for easy measurement of viscosity and elasticity in fluids and solids, resulting in huge advances in materials research. Ultrasonic time-domain reflectometers (which send an ultrasonic pulse through a material and measure reflections from discontinuities) could find flaws inside cast metal and stone objects, improving structural safety.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: During World War II, independent research groups in the United States, Russia, and Japan discovered a new class of synthetic materials, called ferroelectrics, which exhibited piezoelectric constants many times higher than natural materials. This led to intense research to develop barium titanate and later lead zirconate titanate materials with specific properties for particular applications.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: One significant example of the use of piezoelectric crystals was developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories. Following World War I, Frederick R. Lack, working in radio telephony in the engineering department, developed the "AT cut" crystal, a crystal that operated through a wide range of temperatures. Lack's crystal did not need the heavy accessories previous crystal used, facilitating its use on aircraft. This development allowed Allied air forces to engage in coordinated mass attacks through the use of aviation radio.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Development of piezoelectric devices and materials in the United States was kept within the companies doing the development, mostly due to the wartime beginnings of the field, and in the interests of securing profitable patents. New materials were the first to be developed—quartz crystals were the first commercially exploited piezoelectric material, but scientists searched for higher-performance materials. Despite the advances in materials and the maturation of manufacturing processes, the United States market did not grow as quickly as Japan's did. Without many new applications, the growth of the United States' piezoelectric industry suffered.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: In contrast, Japanese manufacturers shared their information, quickly overcoming technical and manufacturing challenges and creating new markets. In Japan, a temperature stable crystal cut was developed by Issac Koga. Japanese efforts in materials research created piezoceramic materials competitive to the United States materials but free of expensive patent restrictions. Major Japanese piezoelectric developments included new designs of piezoceramic filters for radios and televisions, piezo buzzers and audio transducers that can connect directly to electronic circuits, and the piezoelectric igniter, which generates sparks for small engine ignition systems and gas-grill lighters, by compressing a ceramic disc. Ultrasonic transducers that transmit sound waves through air had existed for quite some time but first saw major commercial use in early television remote controls. These transducers now are mounted on several car models as an echolocation device, helping the driver determine the distance from the car to any objects that may be in its path.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The nature of the piezoelectric effect is closely related to the occurrence of electric dipole moments in solids. The latter may either be induced for ions on crystal lattice sites with asymmetric charge surroundings (as in BaTiO and PZTs) or may directly be carried by molecular groups (as in cane sugar). The dipole density or polarization (dimensionality [C·m/m] ) may easily be calculated for crystals by summing up the dipole moments per volume of the crystallographic unit cell. As every dipole is a vector, the dipole density P is a vector field. Dipoles near each other tend to be aligned in regions called Weiss domains. The domains are usually randomly oriented, but can be aligned using the process of "poling" (not the same as magnetic poling), a process by which a strong electric field is applied across the material, usually at elevated temperatures. Not all piezoelectric materials can be poled.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Of decisive importance for the piezoelectric effect is the change of polarization P when applying a mechanical stress. This might either be caused by a reconfiguration of the dipole-inducing surrounding or by re-orientation of molecular dipole moments under the influence of the external stress. Piezoelectricity may then manifest in a variation of the polarization strength, its direction or both, with the details depending on: 1. the orientation of P within the crystal; 2. crystal symmetry; and 3. the applied mechanical stress. The change in P appears as a variation of surface charge density upon the crystal faces, i.e. as a variation of the electric field extending between the faces caused by a change in dipole density in the bulk. For example, a 1 cm cube of quartz with 2 kN (500 lbf) of correctly applied force can produce a voltage of 12500 V.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Piezoelectric materials also show the opposite effect, called the converse piezoelectric effect, where the application of an electrical field creates mechanical deformation in the crystal.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: where formula_8 is the piezoelectric tensor and the superscript t stands for its transpose. Due to the symmetry of formula_8, formula_10.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: where ["d"] is the matrix for the direct piezoelectric effect and ["d"] is the matrix for the converse piezoelectric effect. The superscript "E" indicates a zero, or constant, electric field; the superscript "T" indicates a zero, or constant, stress field; and the superscript t stands for transposition of a matrix.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Notice that the third order tensor formula_8 maps vectors into symmetric matrices. There are no non-trivial rotation-invariant tensors that have this property, which is why there are no isotropic piezoelectric materials.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The strain-charge for a material of the 4mm (C) crystal class (such as a poled piezoelectric ceramic such as tetragonal PZT or BaTiO) as well as the 6mm crystal class may also be written as (ANSI IEEE 176):


title: Piezoelectricity

text: where the first equation represents the relationship for the converse piezoelectric effect and the latter for the direct piezoelectric effect.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Although the above equations are the most used form in literature, some comments about the notation are necessary. Generally, "D" and "E" are vectors, that is, Cartesian tensors of rank 1; and permittivity "ε" is a Cartesian tensor of rank 2. Strain and stress are, in principle, also rank-2 tensors. But conventionally, because strain and stress are all symmetric tensors, the subscript of strain and stress can be relabeled in the following fashion: 11 → 1; 22 → 2; 33 → 3; 23 → 4; 13 → 5; 12 → 6. (Different conventions may be used by different authors in literature. For example, some use 12 → 4; 23 → 5; 31 → 6 instead.) That is why "S" and "T" appear to have the "vector form" of six components. Consequently, "s" appears to be a 6-by-6 matrix instead of a rank-3 tensor. Such a relabeled notation is often called Voigt notation. Whether the shear strain components "S", "S", "S" are tensor components or engineering strains is another question. In the equation above, they must be engineering strains for the 6,6 coefficient of the compliance matrix to be written as shown, i.e., 2("s" − "s"). Engineering shear strains are double the value of the corresponding tensor shear, such as "S" = 2"S" and so on. This also means that "s" = , where "G" is the shear modulus.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: where the first set of four terms corresponds to the direct piezoelectric effect and the second set of four terms corresponds to the converse piezoelectric effect. The equality between the direct piezoelectric tensor and the transpose of the converse piezoelectric tensor originates from the Maxwell relations of thermodynamics. For those piezoelectric crystals for which the polarization is of the crystal-field induced type, a formalism has been worked out that allows for the calculation of piezoelectrical coefficients "d" from electrostatic lattice constants or higher-order Madelung constants.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Of the 32 crystal classes, 21 are non-centrosymmetric (not having a centre of symmetry), and of these, 20 exhibit direct piezoelectricity (the 21st is the cubic class 432). Ten of these represent the polar crystal classes, which show a spontaneous polarization without mechanical stress due to a non-vanishing electric dipole moment associated with their unit cell, and which exhibit pyroelectricity. If the dipole moment can be reversed by applying an external electric field, the material is said to be ferroelectric.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: For polar crystals, for which P ≠ 0 holds without applying a mechanical load, the piezoelectric effect manifests itself by changing the magnitude or the direction of P or both.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: For the nonpolar but piezoelectric crystals, on the other hand, a polarization P different from zero is only elicited by applying a mechanical load. For them the stress can be imagined to transform the material from a nonpolar crystal class (P = 0) to a polar one, having P ≠ 0.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Ceramics with randomly oriented grains must be ferroelectric to exhibit piezoelectricity. The occurrence of abnormal grain growth (AGG) in sintered polycrystalline piezoelectric ceramics has detrimental effects on the piezoelectric performance in such systems and should be avoided, as the microstructure in piezoceramics exhibiting AGG tends to consist of few abnormally large elongated grains in a matrix of randomly oriented finer grains. Macroscopic piezoelectricity is possible in textured polycrystalline non-ferroelectric piezoelectric materials, such as AlN and ZnO.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The families of ceramics with perovskite, tungsten-bronze, and related structures exhibit piezoelectricity:


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The fabrication of lead-free piezoceramics pose multiple challenges, from an environmental standpoint and their ability to replicate the properties of their lead-based counterparts. By removing the lead component of the piezoceramic, the risk of toxicity to humans decreases, but the mining and extraction of the materials can be harmful to the environment. Analysis of the environmental profile of PZT versus sodium potassium niobate (NKN or KNN) shows that across the four indicators considered (primary energy consumption, toxicological footprint, eco-indicator 99, and input-output upstream greenhouse gas emissions), KNN is actually more harmful to the environment. Most of the concerns with KNN, specifically its NbO component, are in the early phase of its life cycle before it reaches manufacturers. Since the harmful impacts are focused on these early phases, some actions can be taken to minimize the effects. Returning the land as close to its original form after NbO mining via dam deconstruction or replacing a stockpile of utilizable soil are known aids for any extraction event. For minimizing air quality effects, modeling and simulation still needs to occur to fully understand what mitigation methods are required. The extraction of lead-free piezoceramic components has not grown to a significant scale at this time, but from early analysis, experts encourage caution when it comes to environmental effects.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: A piezoelectric potential can be created in any bulk or nanostructured semiconductor crystal having non central symmetry, such as the Group III–V and II–VI materials, due to polarization of ions under applied stress and strain. This property is common to both the zincblende and wurtzite crystal structures. To first order, there is only one independent piezoelectric coefficient in zincblende, called e, coupled to shear components of the strain. In wurtzite, there are instead three independent piezoelectric coefficients: "e", "e" and "e".


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The semiconductors where the strongest piezoelectricity is observed are those commonly found in the wurtzite structure, i.e. GaN, InN, AlN and ZnO (see piezotronics).


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Since 2006, there have also been a number of reports of strong non linear piezoelectric effects in polar semiconductors.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Such effects are generally recognized to be at least important if not of the same order of magnitude as the first order approximation.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The piezo-response of polymers is not as high as the response for ceramics; however, polymers hold properties that ceramics do not. Over the last few decades, non-toxic, piezoelectric polymers have been studied and applied due to their flexibility and smaller acoustical impedance. Other properties that make these materials significant include their biocompatibility, biodegradability, low cost, and low power consumption compared to other piezo-materials (ceramics, etc.). Piezoelectric polymers and non-toxic polymer composites can be used given their different physical properties.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Piezoelectric polymers can be classified by bulk polymers, voided charged polymers ("piezoelectrets"), and polymer composites. A piezo-response observed by bulk polymers is mostly due to its molecular structure. There are two types of bulk polymers: amorphous and semi-crystalline. Examples of semi-crystalline polymers are Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) and its copolymers, Polyamides, and Parylene-C. Non-crystalline polymers, such as Polyimide and Polyvinylidene Chloride (PVDC), fall under amorphous bulk polymers. Voided charged polymers exhibit the piezoelectric effect due to charge induced by poling of a porous polymeric film. Under an electric field, charges form on the surface of the voids forming dipoles. Electric responses can be caused by any deformation of these voids. The piezoelectric effect can also be observed in polymer composites by integrating piezoelectric ceramic particles into a polymer film. A polymer does not have to be piezo-active to be an effective material for a polymer composite. In this case, a material could be made up of an inert matrix with a separate piezo-active component.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: PVDF exhibits piezoelectricity several times greater than quartz. The piezo-response observed from PVDF is about 20–30 pC/N. That is an order of 5–50 times less than that of piezoelectric ceramic lead zirconate titanate (PZT). The thermal stability of the piezoelectric effect of polymers in the PVDF family (i.e. vinylidene fluoride co-poly trifluoroethylene) goes up to 125 °C. Some applications of PVDF are pressure sensors, hydrophones, and shock wave sensors.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Due to their flexibility, piezoelectric composites have been proposed as energy harvesters and nanogenerators. In 2018, it was reported by Zhu et al. that a piezoelectric response of about 17 pC/N could be obtained from PDMS/PZT nanocomposite at 60% porosity. Another PDMS nanocomposite was reported in 2017, in which BaTiO was integrated into PDMS to make a stretchable, transparent nanogenerator for self-powered physiological monitoring. In 2016, polar molecules were introduced into a polyurethane foam in which high responses of up to 244 pC/N were reported.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Most materials exhibit at least weak piezoelectric responses. Trivial examples include sucrose (table sugar), DNA, viral proteins, including those from bacteriophage. An actuator based on wood fibers, called cellulose fibers, has been reported. D33 responses for cellular polypropylene are around 200 pC/N. Some applications of cellular polypropylene are musical key pads, microphones, and ultrasound-based echolocation systems. Recently, single amino acid such as β-glycine also displayed high piezoelectric (178 pmV) as compared to other biological materials.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Currently, industrial and manufacturing is the largest application market for piezoelectric devices, followed by the automotive industry. Strong demand also comes from medical instruments as well as information and telecommunications. The global demand for piezoelectric devices was valued at approximately US$21.6 billion in 2015. The largest material group for piezoelectric devices is piezoceramics, and piezopolymer is experiencing the fastest growth due to its low weight and small size.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Direct piezoelectricity of some substances, like quartz, can generate potential differences of thousands of volts.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The principle of operation of a piezoelectric sensor is that a physical dimension, transformed into a force, acts on two opposing faces of the sensing element. Depending on the design of a sensor, different "modes" to load the piezoelectric element can be used: longitudinal, transversal and shear.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Detection of pressure variations in the form of sound is the most common sensor application, e.g. piezoelectric microphones (sound waves bend the piezoelectric material, creating a changing voltage) and piezoelectric pickups for acoustic-electric guitars. A piezo sensor attached to the body of an instrument is known as a contact microphone.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Piezoelectric sensors especially are used with high frequency sound in ultrasonic transducers for medical imaging and also industrial nondestructive testing (NDT).


title: Piezoelectricity

text: For many sensing techniques, the sensor can act as both a sensor and an actuator—often the term "transducer" is preferred when the device acts in this dual capacity, but most piezo devices have this property of reversibility whether it is used or not. Ultrasonic transducers, for example, can inject ultrasound waves into the body, receive the returned wave, and convert it to an electrical signal (a voltage). Most medical ultrasound transducers are piezoelectric.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: As very high electric fields correspond to only tiny changes in the width of the crystal, this width can be changed with better-than-µm precision, making piezo crystals the most important tool for positioning objects with extreme accuracy—thus their use in actuators.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Multilayer ceramics, using layers thinner than , allow reaching high electric fields with voltage lower than . These ceramics are used within two kinds of actuators: direct piezo actuators and amplified piezoelectric actuators. While direct actuator's stroke is generally lower than , amplified piezo actuators can reach millimeter strokes.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Aside from the stepping stick-slip motor, all these motors work on the same principle. Driven by dual orthogonal vibration modes with a phase difference of 90°, the contact point between two surfaces vibrates in an elliptical path, producing a frictional force between the surfaces. Usually, one surface is fixed, causing the other to move. In most piezoelectric motors, the piezoelectric crystal is excited by a sine wave signal at the resonant frequency of the motor. Using the resonance effect, a much lower voltage can be used to produce a high vibration amplitude.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: A stick-slip motor works using the inertia of a mass and the friction of a clamp. Such motors can be very small. Some are used for camera sensor displacement, thus allowing an anti-shake function.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Different teams of researchers have been investigating ways to reduce vibrations in materials by attaching piezo elements to the material. When the material is bent by a vibration in one direction, the vibration-reduction system responds to the bend and sends electric power to the piezo element to bend in the other direction. Future applications of this technology are expected in cars and houses to reduce noise. Further applications to flexible structures, such as shells and plates, have also been studied for nearly three decades.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: In a demonstration at the Material Vision Fair in Frankfurt in November 2005, a team from TU Darmstadt in Germany showed several panels that were hit with a rubber mallet, and the panel with the piezo element immediately stopped swinging.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Piezoelectric ceramic fiber technology is being used as an electronic damping system on some HEAD tennis rackets.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: All piezo transducers have a fundamental resonant frequency and many harmonic frequencies. Piezo driven Drop-On-Demand fluid systems are sensitive to extra vibrations in the piezo structure that must be reduced or eliminated. One inkjet company, Howtek, Inc solved this problem by replacing glass(rigid) inkjet nozzles with Tefzel (soft) inkjet nozzles. This novel idea popularized single nozzle inkjets and they are now used in 3D Inkjet printers that run for years if kept clean inside and not overheated (Tefzel creeps under pressure at very high temperatures)


title: Piezoelectricity

text: In people with previous total fertilization failure, piezoelectric activation of oocytes together with intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) seems to improve fertilization outcomes.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Piezosurgery Piezosurgery is a minimally invasive technique that aims to cut a target tissue with little damage to neighboring tissues. For example, Hoigne "et al." uses frequencies in the range 25–29 kHz, causing microvibrations of 60–210 μm. It has the ability to cut mineralized tissue without cutting neurovascular tissue and other soft tissue, thereby maintaining a blood-free operating area, better visibility and greater precision.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: In 2015, Cambridge University researchers working in conjunction with researchers from the National Physical Laboratory and Cambridge-based dielectric antenna company Antenova Ltd, using thin films of piezoelectric materials found that at a certain frequency, these materials become not only efficient resonators, but efficient radiators as well, meaning that they can potentially be used as antennas. The researchers found that by subjecting the piezoelectric thin films to an asymmetric excitation, the symmetry of the system is similarly broken, resulting in a corresponding symmetry breaking of the electric field, and the generation of electromagnetic radiation.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Several attempts at the macro-scale application of the piezoelectric technology have emerged to harvest kinetic energy from walking pedestrians.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: In this case, locating high traffic areas is critical for optimization of the energy harvesting efficiency, as well as the orientation of the tile pavement significantly affects the total amount of the harvested energy. A density flow evaluation is recommended to qualitatively evaluate the piezoelectric power harvesting potential of the considered area based on the number of pedestrian crossings per unit time. In X. Li's study, the potential application of a commercial piezoelectric energy harvester in a central hub building at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia is examined and discussed. Optimization of the piezoelectric tile deployment is presented according to the frequency of pedestrian mobility and a model is developed where 3.1% of the total floor area with the highest pedestrian mobility is paved with piezoelectric tiles. The modelling results indicate that the total annual energy harvesting potential for the proposed optimized tile pavement model is estimated at 1.1 MW h/year, which would be sufficient to meet close to 0.5% of the annual energy needs of the building. In Israel, there is a company which has installed piezoelectric materials under a busy highway. The energy generated is adequate and powers street lights, billboards and signs.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: Tire company Goodyear has plans to develop an electricity generating tire which has piezoelectric material lined inside it. As the tire moves, it deforms and thus electricity is generated.


title: Piezoelectricity

text: The efficiency of a hybrid photovoltaic cell that contains piezoelectric materials can be increased simply by placing it near a source of ambient noise or vibration. The effect was demonstrated with organic cells using zinc oxide nanotubes. The electricity generated by the piezoelectric effect itself is a negligible percentage of the overall output. Sound levels as low as 75 decibels improved efficiency by up to 50%. Efficiency peaked at 10 kHz, the resonant frequency of the nanotubes. The electrical field set up by the vibrating nanotubes interacts with electrons migrating from the organic polymer layer. This process decreases the likelihood of recombination, in which electrons are energized but settle back into a hole instead of migrating to the electron-accepting ZnO layer.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The Asian financial crisis was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of East Asia and Southeast Asia beginning in July 1997 and raised fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion. However, the recovery in 1998–1999 was rapid and worries of a meltdown subsided.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The crisis started in Thailand (known in Thailand as the "Tom Yam Kung crisis"; ) on 2 July, with the financial collapse of the Thai baht after the Thai government was forced to float the baht due to lack of foreign currency to support its currency peg to the U.S. dollar. Capital flight ensued almost immediately, beginning an international chain reaction. At the time, Thailand had acquired a burden of foreign debt. As the crisis spread, most of Southeast Asia and later South Korea and Japan saw slumping currencies, devalued stock markets and other asset prices, and a precipitous rise in private debt.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand were the countries most affected by the crisis. Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia and the Philippines were also hurt by the slump. Brunei, mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam were less affected, although all suffered from a loss of demand and confidence throughout the region. Japan was also affected, though less significantly.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Foreign debt-to-GDP ratios rose from 100% to 167% in the four large Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies in 1993–96, then shot up beyond 180% during the worst of the crisis. In South Korea, the ratios rose from 13% to 21% and then as high as 40%, while the other northern newly industrialized countries fared much better. Only in Thailand and South Korea did debt service-to-exports ratios rise.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Although most of the governments of Asia had seemingly sound fiscal policies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stepped in to initiate a $40 billion program to stabilize the currencies of South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia, economies particularly hard hit by the crisis. The efforts to stem a global economic crisis did little to stabilize the domestic situation in Indonesia, however. After 30 years in power, Indonesian President Suharto was forced to step down on 21 May 1998 in the wake of widespread rioting that followed sharp price increases caused by a drastic devaluation of the rupiah. The effects of the crisis lingered through 1998. In 1998, growth in the Philippines dropped to virtually zero. Only Singapore and Taiwan proved relatively insulated from the shock, but both suffered serious hits in passing, the former due to its size and geographical location between Malaysia and Indonesia. By 1999, however, analysts saw signs that the economies of Asia were beginning to recover. After the crisis, economies in the region worked toward financial stability and better financial supervision.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Until 1999, Asia attracted almost half of the total capital inflow into developing countries. The economies of Southeast Asia in particular maintained high interest rates attractive to foreign investors looking for a high rate of return. As a result, the region's economies received a large inflow of money and experienced a dramatic run-up in asset prices. At the same time, the regional economies of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and South Korea experienced high growth rates, of 8–12% GDP, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This achievement was widely acclaimed by financial institutions including IMF and World Bank, and was known as part of the "Asian economic miracle".


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The causes of the debacle are many and disputed. Thailand's economy developed into an economic bubble fueled by hot money. More and more was required as the size of the bubble grew. The same type of situation happened in Malaysia and Indonesia, which had the added complication of what was called "crony capitalism". The short-term capital flow was expensive and often highly conditioned for quick profit. Development money went in a largely uncontrolled manner to certain people only – not necessarily the best suited or most efficient, but those closest to the centers of power. Weak corporate governance also led to inefficient investment and declining profitability.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In the mid-1990s, Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea had large private current account deficits, and the maintenance of fixed exchange rates encouraged external borrowing and led to excessive exposure to foreign exchange risk in both the financial and corporate sectors.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In the mid-1990s, a series of external shocks began to change the economic environment. The devaluation of the Chinese renminbi, and the Japanese yen due to the Plaza Accord of 1985, the raising of U.S. interest rates which led to a strong U.S. dollar, and the sharp decline in semiconductor prices, all adversely affected their growth. As the U.S. economy recovered from a recession in the early 1990s, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank under Alan Greenspan began to raise U.S. interest rates to head off inflation.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: This made the United States a more attractive investment destination relative to Southeast Asia, which had been attracting hot money flows through high short-term interest rates, and raised the value of the U.S. dollar. For the Southeast Asian nations which had currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar, the higher U.S. dollar caused their own exports to become more expensive and less competitive in the global markets. At the same time, Southeast Asia's export growth slowed dramatically in the spring of 1996, deteriorating their current account position.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Some economists have advanced the growing exports of China as a factor contributing to ASEAN nations' export growth slowdown, though these economists maintain the main cause of their crises was excessive real estate speculation. China had begun to compete effectively with other Asian exporters particularly in the 1990s after the implementation of a number of export-oriented reforms. Other economists dispute China's impact, noting that both ASEAN and China experienced simultaneous rapid export growth in the early 1990s.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Many economists believe that the Asian crisis was created not by market psychology or technology, but by policies that distorted incentives within the lender–borrower relationship. The resulting large quantities of credit that became available generated a highly leveraged economic climate, and pushed up asset prices to an unsustainable level, particularly those in non-productive sectors of the economy such as real-estate. These asset prices eventually began to collapse, causing individuals and companies to default on debt obligations.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The resulting panic among lenders led to a large withdrawal of credit from the crisis countries, causing a credit crunch and further bankruptcies. In addition, as foreign investors attempted to withdraw their money, the exchange market was flooded with the currencies of the crisis countries, putting depreciative pressure on their exchange rates. To prevent currency values collapsing, these countries' governments raised domestic interest rates to exceedingly high levels (to help diminish flight of capital by making lending more attractive to investors) and intervened in the exchange market, buying up any excess domestic currency at the fixed exchange rate with foreign reserves. Neither of these policy responses could be sustained for long, as several countries had insufficient levels of foreign exchange reserves.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Very high interest rates, which can be extremely damaging to a healthy economy, wreaked further havoc on economies in an already fragile state, while the central banks were hemorrhaging foreign reserves, of which they had finite amounts. When it became clear that the tide of capital fleeing these countries was not to be stopped, the authorities ceased defending their fixed exchange rates and allowed their currencies to float. The resulting depreciated value of those currencies meant that foreign currency-denominated liabilities grew substantially in domestic currency terms, causing more bankruptcies and further deepening the crisis.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Other economists, including Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, have downplayed the role of the real economy in the crisis compared to the financial markets. The rapidity with which the crisis happened has prompted Sachs and others to compare it to a classic bank run prompted by a sudden risk shock. Sachs pointed to strict monetary and contractionary fiscal policies implemented by the governments on the advice of the IMF in the wake of the crisis, while Frederic Mishkin points to the role of asymmetric information in the financial markets that led to a "herd mentality" among investors that magnified a small risk in the real economy. The crisis has thus attracted attention from behavioral economists interested in market psychology.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Another possible cause of the sudden risk shock may also be attributable to the handover of Hong Kong sovereignty on 1 July 1997. During the 1990s, hot money flew into the Southeast Asia region through financial hubs, especially Hong Kong. The investors were often ignorant of the actual fundamentals or risk profiles of the respective economies, and once the crisis gripped the region, the political uncertainty regarding the future of Hong Kong as an Asian financial centre led some investors to withdraw from Asia altogether. This shrink in investments only worsened the financial conditions in Asia (subsequently leading to the depreciation of the Thai baht on 2 July 1997).


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Several case studies on the topic of the application of network analysis of a financial system help to explain the interconnectivity of financial markets, as well as the significance of the robustness of hubs (or main nodes). Any negative externalities in the hubs creates a ripple effect through the financial system and the economy (as well as any connected economies) as a whole.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The foreign ministers of the 10 ASEAN countries believed that the well co-ordinated manipulation of their currencies was a deliberate attempt to destabilize the ASEAN economies. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused George Soros of ruining Malaysia's economy with "massive currency speculation". Soros claims to have been a buyer of the ringgit during its fall, having sold it short in 1997.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: At the 30th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting held in Subang Jaya, Malaysia, the foreign ministers issued a joint declaration on 25 July 1997 expressing serious concern and called for further intensification of ASEAN's cooperation to safeguard and promote ASEAN's interest in this regard. Coincidentally, on that same day, the central bankers of most of the affected countries were at the EMEAP (Executive Meeting of East Asia Pacific) meeting in Shanghai, and they failed to make the "New Arrangement to Borrow" operational. A year earlier, the finance ministers of these same countries had attended the 3rd APEC finance ministers meeting in Kyoto, Japan, on 17 March 1996, and according to that joint declaration, they had been unable to double the amounts available under the "General Agreement to Borrow" and the "Emergency Finance Mechanism".


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The scope and the severity of the collapses led to an urgent need for outside intervention. Since the countries melting down were among the richest in their region, and in the world, and since hundreds of billions of dollars were at stake, any response to the crisis was likely to be cooperative and international. The International Monetary Fund created a series of bailouts ("rescue packages") for the most-affected economies to enable them to avoid default, tying the packages to currency, banking and financial system reforms. Due to IMF's involvement in the financial crisis, the term IMF Crisis became a way to refer to the Asian Financial Crisis in countries that were affected.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The IMF's support was conditional on a series of economic reforms, the "structural adjustment package" (SAP). The SAPs called on crisis-struck nations to reduce government spending and deficits, allow insolvent banks and financial institutions to fail, and aggressively raise interest rates. The reasoning was that these steps would restore confidence in the nations' fiscal solvency, penalize insolvent companies, and protect currency values. Above all, it was stipulated that IMF-funded capital had to be administered rationally in the future, with no favored parties receiving funds by preference. In at least one of the affected countries the restrictions on foreign ownership were greatly reduced.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: There were to be adequate government controls set up to supervise all financial activities, ones that were to be independent, in theory, of private interest. Insolvent institutions had to be closed, and insolvency itself had to be clearly defined. In addition, financial systems were to become "transparent", that is, provide the kind of financial information used in the West to make financial decisions.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: As countries fell into crisis, many local businesses and governments that had taken out loans in US dollars, which suddenly became much more expensive relative to the local currency which formed their earned income, found themselves unable to pay their creditors. The dynamics of the situation were similar to that of the Latin American debt crisis. The effects of the SAPs were mixed and their impact controversial. Critics, however, noted the contractionary nature of these policies, arguing that in a recession, the traditional Keynesian response was to increase government spending, prop up major companies, and lower interest rates.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The reasoning was that by stimulating the economy and staving off recession, governments could restore confidence while preventing economic loss. They pointed out that the U.S. government had pursued expansionary policies, such as lowering interest rates, increasing government spending, and cutting taxes, when the United States itself entered a recession in 2001, and arguably the same in the fiscal and monetary policies during the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Many commentators in retrospect criticized the IMF for encouraging the developing economies of Asia down the path of "fast-track capitalism", meaning liberalization of the financial sector (elimination of restrictions on capital flows), maintenance of high domestic interest rates to attract portfolio investment and bank capital, and pegging of the national currency to the dollar to reassure foreign investors against currency risk.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The conventional high-interest-rate economic strategy is normally employed by monetary authorities to attain the chain objectives of tightened money supply, discouraged currency speculation, stabilized exchange rate, curbed currency depreciation, and ultimately contained inflation.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In the Asian meltdown, highest IMF officials rationalized their prescribed high interest rates as follows:


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: When their governments "approached the IMF, the reserves of Thailand and South Korea were perilously low, and the Indonesian Rupiah was excessively depreciated. Thus, the first order of business was... to restore confidence in the currency. To achieve this, countries have to make it more attractive to hold domestic currency, which in turn, requires increasing interest rates temporarily, even if higher interest costs complicate the situation of weak banks and corporations...


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Why not operate with lower interest rates and a greater devaluation? This is a relevant tradeoff, but there can be no question that the degree of devaluation in the Asian countries is excessive, both from the viewpoint of the individual countries, and from the viewpoint of the international system. Looking first to the individual country, companies with substantial foreign currency debts, as so many companies in these countries have, stood to suffer far more from… currency (depreciation) than from a temporary rise in domestic interest rates…. Thus, on macroeconomics… monetary policy has to be kept tight to restore confidence in the currency...


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: To reverse (currency depreciation), countries have to make it more attractive to hold domestic currency, and that means temporarily raising interest rates, even if this (hurts) weak banks and corporations.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: From 1985 to 1996, Thailand's economy grew at an average of over 9% per year, the highest economic growth rate of any country at the time. Inflation was kept reasonably low within a range of 3.4–5.7%. The baht was pegged at 25 to the U.S. dollar.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: On 14 and 15 May 1997, the Thai baht was hit by massive speculative attacks. On 30 June 1997, Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh said that he would not devalue the baht. However, Thailand lacked the foreign reserves to support the USD–Baht currency peg, and the Thai government was eventually forced to float the Baht, on 2 July 1997, allowing the value of the Baht to be set by the currency market. This caused a chain reaction of events, eventually culminating into a region-wide crisis.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Thailand's booming economy came to a halt amid massive layoffs in finance, real estate, and construction that resulted in huge numbers of workers returning to their villages in the countryside and 600,000 foreign workers being sent back to their home countries. The baht devalued swiftly and lost more than half of its value. The baht reached its lowest point of 56 units to the U.S. dollar in January 1998. The Thai stock market dropped 75%. Finance One, the largest Thai finance company until then, collapsed.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: On 11 August 1997, the IMF unveiled a rescue package for Thailand with more than $17 billion, subject to conditions such as passing laws relating to bankruptcy (reorganizing and restructuring) procedures and establishing strong regulation frameworks for banks and other financial institutions. The IMF approved on 20 August 1997, another bailout package of $2.9 billion.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Poverty and inequality increased while employment, wages and social welfare all declined as a result of the crisis.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, income in the northeast, the poorest part of the country, rose by 46 percent from 1998 to 2006. Nationwide poverty fell from 21.3 to 11.3 percent. Thailand's Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, fell from .525 in 2000 to .499 in 2004 (it had risen from 1996 to 2000) versus 1997 Asian financial crisis.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: By 2001, Thailand's economy had recovered. The increasing tax revenues allowed the country to balance its budget and repay its debts to the IMF in 2003, four years ahead of schedule. The Thai baht continued to appreciate to 29 Baht to the U.S. dollar in October 2010.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In June 1997, Indonesia seemed far from crisis. Unlike Thailand, Indonesia had low inflation, a trade surplus of more than $900 million, huge foreign exchange reserves of more than $20 billion, and a good banking sector. However, a large number of Indonesian corporations had been borrowing in U.S. dollars. This practice had worked well for these corporations during the preceding years, as the rupiah had strengthened respective to the dollar; their effective levels of debt and financing costs had decreased as the local currency's value rose.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In July 1997, when Thailand floated the baht, Indonesia's monetary authorities widened the rupiah currency trading band from 8% to 12%. As a result, the rupiah suddenly came under severe attack in August. Therefore, on the 14th of the month, the managed floating exchange regime was replaced by a free-floating exchange rate arrangement. The rupiah dropped further due to the shift. The IMF came forward with a rescue package of $23 billion, but the rupiah was sinking further amid fears over corporate debts, massive selling of rupiah, and strong demand for dollars. The rupiah and the Jakarta Stock Exchange touched a historic low in September. Moody's eventually downgraded Indonesia's long-term debt to "junk bond".


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Although the rupiah crisis began in July and August 1997, it intensified in November when the effects of that summer devaluation showed up on corporate balance sheets. Companies that had borrowed in dollars had to face the higher costs imposed upon them by the rupiah's decline, and many reacted by buying dollars through selling rupiah, undermining the value of the latter further. Before the crisis, the exchange rate between the rupiah and the dollar was roughly 2,600 rupiah to 1 U.S. dollar. The rate plunged to over 11,000 rupiah to 1 U.S. dollar on 9 January 1998, with spot rates over 14,000 during 23–26 January and trading again over 14,000 for about six weeks during June–July 1998. On 31 December 1998, the rate was almost exactly 8,000 to 1 U.S. dollar. Indonesia lost 13.5% of its GDP that year.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In February 1998, President Suharto sacked the incumbent Bank Indonesia governor, J. Soedradjad Djiwandono, but this proved insufficient. Amidst widespread rioting in May 1998, Suharto resigned under public pressure and Vice President B. J. Habibie replaced him.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: As a result of the financial crisis that hit the country, many factors arising from all aspects, including sports broadcasting on Indonesian television, including:


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Additionally, the Indonesian motorcycle Grand Prix, which was held at Sentul, was dropped from the 1998 Superbike and MotoGP calendars. World Rally Championship also dropped the Rally Indonesia from their 1998 calendar.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The banking sector was burdened with non-performing loans as its large corporations were funding aggressive expansions. During that time, there was a haste to build great conglomerates to compete on the world stage. Many businesses ultimately failed to ensure returns and profitability. The chaebol, South Korean conglomerates, simply absorbed more and more capital investment. Eventually, excess debt led to major failures and takeovers.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Amongst other stimuli, the crisis resulted in the bankruptcy of major Korean companies, provoking not only corporations, but also government officials towards corruption. The Hanbo scandal of early 1997 exposed South Koreas economic weaknesses and corruption problems to the international financial community. Later that year, in July, South Korea's third-largest car maker, Kia Motors, asked for emergency loans. The domino effect of collapsing large South Korean companies drove the interest rates up and international investors away.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In the wake of the Asian market downturn, Moody's lowered the credit rating of South Korea from A1 to A3, on 28 November 1997, and downgraded again to B2 on 11 December. That contributed to a further decline in South Korean shares since stock markets were already bearish in November. The Seoul stock exchange fell by 4% on 7 November 1997. On 8 November, it plunged by 7%, its biggest one-day drop to that date. And on 24 November, stocks fell a further 7.2% on fears that the IMF would demand tough reforms. In 1998, Hyundai Motor Company took over Kia Motors. Samsung Motors' $5 billion venture was dissolved due to the crisis, and eventually Daewoo Motors was sold to the American company General Motors (GM).


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided US$58.4 billion as a bailout package. In return, Korea was required to take restructuring measures. The ceiling on foreign investment in Korean companies was raised from 26 percent to 100 percent. In addition, the Korean government started financial sector reform program. Under the program, 787 insolvent financial institutions were closed or merged by June 2003. The number of financial institutions in which foreign investors invested has increased rapidly. Examples include New Bridge Capital's takeover of Korea First Bank.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The South Korean won, meanwhile, weakened to more than 1,700 per U.S. dollar from around 800, but later managed to recover. However, like the chaebol, South Korea's government did not escape unscathed. Its national debt-to-GDP ratio more than doubled (approximately 13% to 30%) as a result of the crisis.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In May 1997, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the country's central bank, raised interest rates by 1.75 percentage points and again by 2 points on 19 June. Thailand triggered the crisis on 2 July and on 3 July, the Bangko Sentral intervened to defend the peso, raising the overnight rate from 15% to 32% at the onset of the Asian crisis in mid-July 1997. The peso dropped from 26 pesos per dollar at the start of the crisis to 46.50 pesos in early 1998 to 53 pesos as in July 2001.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The Philippine GDP contracted by 0.6% during the worst part of the crisis, but grew by 3% by 2001, despite scandals of the administration of Joseph Estrada in 2001, most notably the "jueteng" scandal, causing the PSE Composite Index, the main index of the Philippine Stock Exchange, to fall to 1,000 points from a high of 3,448 points in 1997. The peso's value declined to around 55.75 pesos to the U.S. dollar. Later that year, Estrada was on the verge of impeachment but his allies in the senate voted against continuing the proceedings.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: This led to popular protests culminating in the "EDSA II Revolution", which effected his resignation and elevated Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the presidency. Arroyo lessened the crisis in the country. The Philippine peso rose to about 50 pesos by the year's end and traded at around 41 pesos to a dollar in late 2007. The stock market also reached an all-time high in 2007 and the economy was growing by more than 7 percent, its highest in nearly two decades.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: China's nonconvertible capital account and its foreign exchange control were decisive in limiting the impact of the crisis.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB), had been pegged in 1994 to the U.S. dollar at a ratio of 8.3 RMB to the dollar. Having largely kept itself above the fray throughout 1997–1998, there was heavy speculation in the Western press that China would soon be forced to devalue its currency to protect the competitiveness of its exports vis-a-vis those of the ASEAN nations, whose exports became cheaper relative to China's. However, the RMB's non-convertibility protected its value from currency speculators, and the decision was made to maintain the peg of the currency, thereby improving the country's standing within Asia. The currency peg was partly scrapped in July 2005, rising 2.3% against the dollar, reflecting pressure from the United States.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Unlike investments of many of the Southeast Asian nations, almost all of China's foreign investment took the form of factories on the ground rather than securities, which insulated the country from rapid capital flight. While China was unaffected by the crisis compared to Southeast Asia and South Korea, GDP growth slowed sharply in 1998 and 1999, calling attention to structural problems within its economy. In particular, the Asian financial crisis convinced the Chinese government of the need to resolve the issues of its enormous financial weaknesses, such as having too many non-performing loans within its banking system, and relying heavily on trade with the United States.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In October 1997, the Hong Kong dollar, which had been pegged at 7.8 to the U.S. dollar since 1983, came under speculative pressure because Hong Kong's inflation rate had been significantly higher than the United States' for years. Monetary authorities spent more than $1 billion to defend the local currency. Since Hong Kong had more than $80 billion in foreign reserves, which is equivalent to 700% of its M1 money supply and 45% of its M3 money supply, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (effectively the region's central bank) managed to maintain the peg.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Stock markets became more and more volatile; between 20 and 23 October the Hang Seng Index dropped 23%. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority then promised to protect the currency. On 23 October 1997, it raised overnight interest rates from 8% to 23%, and at one point to '280%'.The HKMA had recognized that speculators were taking advantage of the city's unique currency-board system, in which overnight rates(HIBOR) automatically increase in proportion to large net sales of the local currency. The rate hike, however, increased downward pressure on the stock market, allowing speculators to profit by short selling shares. The HKMA started buying component shares of the Hang Seng Index in mid-August 1998.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The HKMA and Donald Tsang, the then Financial Secretary, declared war on speculators. The Government ended up buying approximately HK$120 billion (US$15 billion) worth of shares in various companies, and became the largest shareholder of some of those companies (e.g., the government owned 10% of HSBC) at the end of August, when hostilities ended with the closing of the August Hang Seng Index futures contract. In 1999, the Government started selling those shares by launching the Tracker Fund of Hong Kong, making a profit of about HK$30 billion (US$4 billion).


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In July 1997, within days of the Thai baht devaluation, the Malaysian ringgit was heavily traded by speculators. The overnight rate jumped from under 8% to over 40%. This led to rating downgrades and a general sell off on the stock and currency markets. By end of 1997, ratings had fallen many notches from investment grade to junk, the KLSE had lost more than 50% from above 1,200 to under 600, and the ringgit had lost 50% of its value, falling from above 2.50 to under 4.57 on (23 January 1998) to the dollar. The then prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad imposed strict capital controls and introduced a 3.80 peg against the U.S. dollar.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Malaysian moves involved fixing the local currency to the U.S. dollar, stopping the overseas trade in ringgit currency and other ringgit assets therefore making offshore use of the ringgit invalid, restricting the amount of currency and investments that residents can take abroad, and imposed for foreign portfolio funds, a minimum one-year "stay period" which since has been converted to an exit tax. The decision to make ringgit held abroad invalid has also dried up sources of ringgit held abroad that speculators borrow from to manipulate the ringgit, for example by "selling short". Those who did, had to repurchase the limited ringgit at higher prices, making it unattractive to them. It also fully suspended the trading of CLOB (Central Limit Order Book) counters, indefinitely freezing approximately $4.47 billion worth of shares and affecting 172,000 investors, most of them Singaporeans, which became a political issue between the two countries.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In 1998, the output of the real economy declined plunging the country into its first recession for many years. The construction sector contracted 23.5%, manufacturing shrunk 9% and the agriculture sector 5.9%. Overall, the country's gross domestic product plunged 6.2% in 1998. During that year, the ringgit plunged below 4.7 and the KLSE fell below 270 points. In September that year, various defensive measures were announced to overcome the crisis.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The principal measure taken were to move the ringgit from a free float to a fixed exchange rate regime. Bank Negara fixed the ringgit at 3.8 to the dollar. Capital controls were imposed while aid offered from the IMF was refused. Various task force agencies were formed. The Corporate Debt Restructuring Committee dealt with corporate loans. Danaharta discounted and bought bad loans from banks to facilitate orderly asset realization. Danamodal recapitalized banks.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Growth then settled at a slower but more sustainable pace. The massive current account deficit became a fairly substantial surplus. Banks were better capitalized and NPLs were realised in an orderly way. Small banks were bought out by strong ones. A large number of PLCs were unable to regulate their financial affairs and were delisted. Compared to the 1997 current account, by 2005, Malaysia was estimated to have a $14.06 billion surplus. Asset values however, have not returned to their pre-crisis highs. Foreign investor confidence was still low, partially due to the lack of transparency shown in how the CLOB counters had been dealt with.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: In 2005 the last of the crisis measures were removed as taken off the fixed exchange system. But unlike the pre-crisis days, it did not appear to be a free float, but a managed float, like the Singapore dollar.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Mongolia was adversely affected by the "Asian financial crisis" of 1997–98 and suffered a further loss of income as a result of the Russian crisis in 1999. Economic growth picked up in 1997–99 after stalling in 1996 due to a series of natural disasters and increases in world prices of copper and cashmere. Public revenues and exports collapsed in 1998 and 1999 due to the repercussions of the Asian financial crisis. In August and September 1999, the economy suffered from a temporary Russian ban on exports of oil and oil products. Mongolia joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1997. The international donor community pledged over $300 million per year at the last Consultative Group Meeting, held in Ulaanbaatar in June 1999.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: As the financial crisis spread, the economy of Singapore dipped into a short recession. The short duration and milder effect on its economy was credited to the active management by the government. For example, the Monetary Authority of Singapore allowed for a gradual 20% depreciation of the Singapore dollar to cushion and guide the economy to a soft landing. The timing of government programs such as the Interim Upgrading Program and other construction related projects were brought forward.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Instead of allowing the labor markets to work, the National Wage Council pre-emptively agreed to Central Provident Fund cuts to lower labor costs, with limited impact on disposable income and local demand. Unlike in Hong Kong, no attempt was made to directly intervene in the capital markets and the "Straits Times" Index was allowed to drop 60%. In less than a year, the Singaporean economy fully recovered and continued on its growth trajectory.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: The crisis had also put pressure on Japan, whose economy is particularly prominent in the region. Asian countries usually ran a trade deficit with Japan because its economy was more than twice the size of the rest of Asia together; about 40% of Japan's exports go to Asia. The Japanese yen fell to 147 as mass selling began, but Japan was the world's largest holder of currency reserves at the time, so it was easily defended, and quickly bounced back. A run on the banks was narrowly averted on 26 November 1997 when TV networks decided not to report on long queues that had formed outside banks, before the central bank had ordered that they be let in. The real GDP growth rate slowed dramatically in 1997, from 5% to 1.6%, and even sank into recession in 1998 due to intense competition from cheapened rivals; also in 1998 the government had to bail out several banks. The Asian financial crisis also led to more bankruptcies in Japan. In addition, with South Korea's devalued currency and China's steady gains, many companies complained outright that they could not compete.


title: 1997 Asian financial crisis

text: Another longer-term result was the changing relationship between the United States and Japan, with the United States no longer openly supporting the highly artificial trade environment and exchange rates that governed economic relations between the two countries for almost five decades after World War II.