After the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 (which also affected Russia), emerging economies were determined to figure out how to avoid repeating that experience. They identified three keys to managing the perils of modern financial globalization: a large cushion of reserves to stave off speculative attacks; avoidance of large current-account deficits (with surpluses used to accumulate reserves); and low external public and private debt.