Emerging markets have, it is generally considered, had a good financial crisis. So good, in fact, that for many investors, they are the future. Emerging market economies are growing faster than those of the developed world, they are not tainted by the problems of subprime mortgages or toxic assets, while their banks remain largely strong – without the high leverage that undermined many western institutions.
More significantly, it was emerging markets, most notably China, that pulled the world back from the brink of financial meltdown – not the US, the world's largest economy. “We are no longer in a world driven by the US, but one driven by the emerging markets,” says Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC.
This is a dramatic reversal from the past – when financial crises hit the developing markets hardest, usually because the crises were created by the countries' own poor economic management. The Mexican “tequila crisis” of 1994-95, the Asian and Russian crises of 1997-98 and Argentina's debt default of 2001 all fit into this category.