The Asian financial crisis is not only weakening the global economy but extracting enormous human costs that could probe destabilizing for world peace. To resolve it requires more than pouring in a lot of money through the IMF. At the global level we need a new financial and economic charter much like the UN political charter that will address the root causes of the turmoil. At the bottom Asians must change their business practices and learn to operate in an open and transparent global economy. PNS commentator Edward Liu, an ethnic Chinese born and raised in the Philippines, is a practicing attorney in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Call it what you will -- the Asian Flu, Contagion, Meltdown, Deflation. The financial turmoil which began in Thailand six months ago has spread and debilitated the tiger economies in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and rocked the financial markets in Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan.

While the American media pack remains fixated on what we Asians dubbed America's "geisha" scandal in the White House, there is a human story imploding in Asia that could have a profound impact on our global village.

This is no small story. What was bruited to be the Asian millennium or the Pacific Rim Century may soon be downgraded to merely a dream. Among some overseas Chinese, the joke now is that the Asian Dragons are metamorphasizing into the Asian Worms.

As the U.S. Congress begins to debate whether or not to infuse an additional $18 billion in American contributions into the IMF rescue package of $100 billion already budgeted, the public might consider the following.

• The Asian contagion is not a regional problem but a global one. In an interdependent and interconnected global economy, the financial health of Asia, which absorbs one-third of the exports from the U.S., impacts the U.S. economy both directly and indirectly.

  The devaluation of Asian currencies and ensuing deflation could cripple the ability of these Asian nations to buy American goods, from Boeing jets to computers and American beef and poultry. That translates into a loss of American jobs and a contraction in the American economy.

• The IMF and the World Bank bailouts aren't just altruism. These monies are loans which will have to be paid for with interest.

• Indirectly, Americans have a stake in stabilizing Asia's financial market because a collapse would have dire social-political consequences for world peace in one of the most densely populated and ethnically diverse regions in the world.

Already in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, 8 million out of a workforce of 90 million are now unemployed and the number is soaring. Ethnic Chinese, who constitute only four percent of the population but control 70 percent of the businesses, are being targeted in a new round of ethnic scapegoating.

Throughout the region, foreign workers -- including 2 million Indonesian workers in Malaysia, 150,000 Filipino housemaids in Hong Kong, hundreds of thousands of Thai construction workers in South Korea and Japan, at least 30,000 Burmese workers in Thailand, face the threat of expulsion and repatriation by host countries.

In the Philippines some 300 wealthy ethnic Chinese have been kidnapped for ransom -- almost one a day. Many of the kidnappers are policemen or military personnel moonlighting for a quick buck.

In Seoul and Hong Kong, suicides have tripled and quadrupled respectively since the turmoil began, in many cases as a result of personal or business bankruptcies.

In Singapore, where over half of the population is under 30 and has never experienced rough times, young people until the virus hit were obsessed with chasing the five "C's" (car, condominium, career, cash, credit card). Now many are in shock as their yuppie lifestyles are unraveling.

Although each society has its own unique economic characteristics and is coping with the crisis in its own way, there are common underlying root causes: reckless private lending, official corruption and cronyism, and the lack of transparency in financial institutional transactions.

So what is to be done? The current market correction will hopefully weed out the most undisciplined and weakest players. Meanwhile, Asians themselves will have to sort out the issues of official corruption, cronyism, patronage and how these sap the potential for healthy economic growth in the market place.

Over the long term, however, we have to recognize that this is a global, not just a regional crisis. We need a new worldwide charter that sets standards for financial and economic behavior worldwide, much as the UN charter sets standards for political behavior.

If there is a rainbow that can be discerned in the current financial typhoon, it is that Asians themselves will have to change their business practices and learn to adapt to the competitive pressures and vicissitudes of an increasingly open global economy which values efficiency, entrepreneurship, transparency and diversity of ideas.