Skip to main content

Success Quote by Jeffrey Sachs

"In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite well, but they decided they'd borrow a bit more and do even better"

About this Quote

There’s a quiet sting in Sachs’s phrasing: the setup sounds like a sensible self-improvement plan, and that’s the point. “Doing quite well” establishes these Asian economies as disciplined and fundamentally healthy - powered by domestic saving rather than the dopamine hit of easy foreign money. Then comes the pivotal turn: they “decided to open up their financial markets,” a technocratic verb that disguises a political gamble. Liberalization is framed less as destiny than as choice, a voluntary invitation to volatility.

The line “borrow a bit more and do even better” reads almost like a parable about overconfidence. Sachs compresses a whole ideology - that capital mobility is inherently modern, that leveraging up is the next rational step - into language that mimics everyday optimism. The subtext is moral, but not preachy: prudence is boring; acceleration is seductive. “International capital” is treated as a force with agency, a guest you let into the house, not a neutral tool you pick up and put down.

Contextually, this is Sachs circling the Asian Financial Crisis without naming it, emphasizing the pre-crisis mood: success breeding a sense of invulnerability. The early 1990s were peak globalization years, when opening markets was sold as graduation into the first world. Sachs’s intent is to puncture that self-congratulatory narrative. He’s suggesting the crisis wasn’t simply “bad luck” or local mismanagement; it was also the predictable downside of adopting a financial model that rewards short-term inflows and punishes the slightest wobble in confidence.

Quote Details

TopicInvestment
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Sachs, Jeffrey. (2026, January 18). In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite well, but they decided they'd borrow a bit more and do even better. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/in-asia-a-lot-of-successful-economies-that-had-20514/

Chicago Style
Sachs, Jeffrey. "In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite well, but they decided they'd borrow a bit more and do even better." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/in-asia-a-lot-of-successful-economies-that-had-20514/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite well, but they decided they'd borrow a bit more and do even better." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/in-asia-a-lot-of-successful-economies-that-had-20514/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Jeffrey Add to List
Asian Economies: Global Capital Shift in the 1990s
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

USA Flag

Jeffrey Sachs (born November 5, 1954) is a Economist from USA.

29 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes