The rationale for any one participant in pushing the price further away from its fundamental equilibrium was often along the lines of the “greater fool” presumption – however artificially high the price, someone would pay more for it later.
So the first stage of the debate, following the crisis, had an almost surrealistic air about it, with the IMF pressing at its Annual Meeting in Hong Kong at the end of 1997 to add capital account deregulation to its mandate, at the very moment when the excessive inflows and reversals had been shown to be so damaging.