By comparison to the 10 to 20 per cent depreciation of most currencies, including the New Zealand dollar, against the US dollar, the currencies of many East Asian countries have fallen very much more sharply - by 44 per cent in the case of Malaysia, by 50 per cent in the case of South Korea, by 52 per cent in the case of Thailand, and by 84 per cent in the case of Indonesia.
Neither New Zealand nor Australia has had an experience even remotely similar. It is worth looking briefly at some of the factors which have provoked recent problems in Asia because understanding these factors helps in understanding why the sorts of vicious corrections we have witnessed in Asia are not likely to happen here.