In respect of short-term external commercial borrowings, there is already a strong international consensus that emerging markets should keep such borrowings relatively small in relation to their total  2  BIS Review 36/2003  external debt or reserves. Many of the financial crises in the 1990s occurred because the short-term debt was excessive. When times were good, such debt was easily accessible.
Several smaller crises also occurred en route, such as: ·  The banks’ “special offer” of loans for the purchase of mutual funds in 1993;  ·  The large devaluation in October 1998, and the growing awareness of the significance of exchange-rate risk, which had hitherto been considered a problem for the Bank of Israel to tackle.