Panic

The Panic Spreads
Forbes Global, Feb 14, 2002

You can no longer safely shrug off Japan's economic crisis. It just might drag the world into a depression.The world - including even the previously sanguine Japanese - is now catching on to the fact that Japan's 12-year slump has deteriorated into a full-blown crisis, threatening a wild global ride. Falloffs in various indicators in the world's second-largest economy resemble the plunge of such countries as the U.S. into the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The article about South Africa starts like this:

There have been a number of most troubling things which have happened in South Africa in recent days which shows that the country's economic base is slowly crumbling and falling apart. One was the accidental, but nevertheless troubling, run on SAAMBOU bank. Due to some troubling news reports there was a run on the bank (something which is virtually unknown in South Africa). One billion Rand was withdrawn and the bank was put under curatorship and all withdrawals stopped.

Argentine Bank Crisis Spreads out to Uruguay
by Thomas Catán in Buenos Aires, Feb 14 2002

Argentina's largest private bank, Banco de Galicia, on Wednesday suspended its operations in Uruguay, one of the first signs that Argentina's financial crisis is spreading to its neighbours. Uruguay's central bank said it would take control of the bank for 90 days after nervous depositors had withdrawn a third of the subsidiary's deposits since December. Argentina's central bank said it would use "all the actions at its disposal" to protect Galicia's Argentine operations, insisting that the two banks were independent of each other. Given the troubled history of Argentina's banks, many Argentines choose nearby Montevideo to deposit their savings. Argentines have billions of dollars in undeclared cash sitting in the banking haven, giving it a reputation as the Switzerland of South America.