6  BIS Review 17/2005  Table 1: MPC members’ voting statistics from January 1998 (current members in red)1  % of months voted for a rate change  % of changes voted for that were in IR months  Number of meetings attended since Jan 1998  Time of membership  Willem Buiter  79  36  29  1997-2000  Sir Alan Budd  65  30  17  1997-1999  John Vickers  61  29  28  1998-2000  Charles Goodhart  52  36  29  1997-2000  Sushil Wadhwani  51  37  37  1999-2002  Christopher Allsopp  49  44  37  2000-2003  DeAnne Julius  46  47  41  1997-2001  Stephen Nickell  41  50  58  2000-date  Mervyn King  39  41  87  1997-date  David Clementi  37  43  57  1997-2002  Ian Plenderleith  33  44  54  1997-2002  Sir Andrew Large  34  40  29  2002-date  Kate Barker  33  53  46  2001-date  Sir Edward George  30  45  67  1997-2003  Richard Lambert  29  67  21  2003-date  Marian Bell  28  56  32  2002-date  Charles Bean  28  60  54  2000-date  Rachel Lomax  25  80  20  2003-date  Paul Tucker  24  63  33  2002-date  1  Up to and including the February 2005 MPC meeting.
For Asia, the impacts have been uneven across countries, depending on the size of the initial capital inflows and the maturity composition of external debt. Nonetheless, because of the higher levels of reserves, the absence of significant currency mismatches, and greater flexibility in the exchange rate regimes, emerging markets in Asia have been able to adjust better to the shock without undermining economic and financial stability. However, it may be noted that, so far, the impact from the trade channel has been the most severe. This is because of the large share of exports and manufacturing in the region’s GDP. For example, exports from the five ASEAN economies fell by about 12 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, and by 28 percent in the first quarter of this year, while GDP growth over the same two quarters fell by 0.6 percent. This decline is large and shows that Asian emerging markets remain closely tied to the global business cycle. Therefore, without improvements in the world economy, a sustained recovery in Asia will be difficult in the nearterm. Reflecting this, the focus of the policy response, at least in Thailand, has been to help the economy adjust to the impact of the crisis through a supportive stance of monetary and fiscal policies while maintaining the overall policy discipline. As for banks, the supervisory approach has been to ensure that the banking system remains healthy, and continues to operate fully to support the economy with good risk management and adequate capital.