Formerly a favourite location for private capital inflows, Brazil was virtually cut off from further bank lending in the 1980s. The country's rating in secondary loan markets plummeted, and foreign direct investment dwindled. New external financing was replaced by an accumulation of interest...

International capital markets are far from functioning perfectly. During the last decade, they overshot both ways: The earlier boom of private capital flows to emerging market economies (EMEs) turned out to be the prelude to the drama of seriously impaired access to foreign capital in the late...