Copyright Bloomberg
Surprises get a bad press in economics, unless they are nice, and those have been scarce of late. A string of monetary policy upsets indicate something is seriously off in Southeast Asia. Projections that interest-rate cuts would be forthcoming in Thailand and Indonesia were wrong. A consensus that the Philippines was done with reductions was wide of the mark. How to account for these misses? At a bare minimum, the decisions indicate a more unsettled financial and political environment than previously assumed.
