Thailand's devaluation of the Thai baht on July 2, 1997, helped spark the Asian financial crisis. The country abandoned its long-standing peg to the U.S. dollar and allowed the baht to float after exhausting foreign-exchange reserves.
Thailand had accumulated large foreign debts, much of them short-term and dollar-denominated, while property and equity prices surged. When investors lost confidence, capital fled and the baht collapsed. The shock spread to Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia and other economies, producing severe stock-market and currency declines.
The International Monetary Fund organized a rescue program for Thailand later in 1997. The crisis was not simply a stock-market event: banking weaknesses, currency mismatches and property bubbles magnified the losses. Russia and Brazil were affected in 1998, but their crises were later developments.