THE story began when the rupiah collapsed. In 1997, an economic crisis was creeping in. For the rescue of the beaten-up rupiah, Bank Indonesia (BI) declared its abandonment of currency control by leaving it to the market mechanism, but it failed. The rupiah value went into freefall.

In line with this, the demand deposits of many banks in BI had a negative balance. The public lost confidence in banks and withdrew money all at once. To restore th