Good catch. I was about to type "Asian Currency Crisis of 1997 led to Russian default in 1998" but edited for brevity in error.
(Though I'm still baffled by that Mexican Peso bailout backstory back then)
Couple of quibbles (minor). Not sure at all that the US will even attempt to do anything about/to Iran **until** they pop a nuke; it's hard to see where the US gains from pre-empting the mullahs, and the antiAmerican Left would go even more berserk than they have done to date. I hope I'm wrong in this, very wrong, but it appears to me that the only trigger event for taking down the mullahs will be the loss of an American city.
And, just in the interest of getting hard facts accurate, the Russian sovereign default occurred in 1998, late July or early August, not 1997. Can get the precise date for you if you want. It was one of the final nails in LTCM's coffin. I had spent the entire previous 3 months trying to get assorted banks to take the other side of a VKO-rouble arbitrage that was a stone lock...alas, to no avail. Didn't make a penny from one of the most obvious bond plays in history (sigh).
Good catch. I was about to type "Asian Currency Crisis of 1997 led to Russian default in 1998" but edited for brevity in error.
(Though I'm still baffled by that Mexican Peso bailout backstory back then)