In Hungary and Romania, among other countries, mismatched foreign currency borrowing has wrought the same damage it did in Asia. The new twist is that in Europe it was households that did much of the borrowing, relying on euros, Swiss francs and even yen for home loans. How this was allowed to happen, heaven alone knows.
The vulnerability of emerging markets to external forces is once again apparent, leaving in tatters the theory that they had decoupled from the developed world. Given that the US and the European Union produce more than half global output, this notion always looked pretty silly.
A less easily predicted aspect of the emergers' current plight is the extent to which surplus countries are subject to banking crises. The most striking case is Russia, which has had the benefit of a huge positive terms of trade shock thanks to a surge in energy prices. From 2000 to mid-2008 Russia built up $560bn of foreign currency reserves. Yet from 1999 Russian banks and companies increased their international borrowing by $460bn.