Nor, incidentally, were we vulnerable as a creditor: Australian banks had not lent much to Asia. Australia has had plenty of experience of changing sentiment – “flavour of the month” at one moment and poor cousin the next – but has not had the kind of total volte face experienced in Asia (“euphoria turned to panic without missing a beat” (Sachs 1997)).
One reason why Australia is not subject to these sorts of dramatic reversals is the depth and maturity of our financial markets. The institutions and instruments that foreigners invested in tended to be longstanding and stable, with quite well-defined prices and behaviour, so there was no basis for the kind of blind-panic flight that occurred in Asia.