foreign debt. The adequacy of foreign reserves was still being judged using a paradigm
of current account problems, so foreign reserves were being compared to months of imports.
However, the problem that was developing at the time was a capital account problem, so
reserves should have also been compared to the amount of short-term foreign debt that the
reserves might have to service if the debt were not rolled over. Therefore, even though the
ratios of short-term debt to foreign reserves were greater than one in all the three countries
that eventually had to seek IMF assistance, the danger of a crisis was not foreseen simply
because the right kind of data were not looked at.