Is it different this time for emerging markets?

MARK Twain once famously said: "History does not repeat itself but it does rhyme." More than 20 years have passed since the Asian Financial Crisis and it appears that the rhythm of frenzies and crashes has bypassed emerging markets. Or has it?

Consider the evolution of financial crises over the past 40 years since the end of the Bretton Woods system.

The commodity boom in the 1970s created an economic boom in Latin America fed largely by US dollar denominated debt. However, the bloc quickly plunged into a debt crisis when the Federal Reserve responded to the stagflationary landscape with a massive rate hike in the early 1980s. That was the first emerging market crisis post-Bretton Woods.