When Mexico's peso crisis occurred in December 1994, all of Latin America experienced the "tequila effect." In January 1998, after seven months of financial turmoil in East Asia, Alan Greenspan, the normally reticent Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, noted that such "vicious cycles...may, in fact, be a defining characteristic of the new high-tech international financial system." Financial Globalization and Democracy in Emerging Markets examines the impact of the new, highly liquid, portfolio capital flows on governments, opposition politicians, business, and labor in such emerging market countries as Mexico, Brazil, Russia, India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.