: The Lexus and The Olive Tree Summary: Opening Scene: The World Is Ten Years Old. “ The trouble spread to one continent after another like a virus.” USA Today On December 8, 1997, the government of Thailand shut down 56 of their countries finance houses. These finance houses borrowed heavily in U.S. dollars and lent those dollars out to Thai businesses for the building of hotels, office blocks, luxury apartments and factories. Almost overnight, these private banks had been bankrupted by the crash of the Thai currency, the baht. Th ....