This makes it possible to instantly reconfigure millions of computer servers and data storage systems to handle different types of applications, so that a fast currency trading system can instantaneously be turned into a machine that serves thousands of videos.
For Poland, a relatively light borrower, the crisis created a riptide in the form of a fast-depreciating currency, the zloty.
The last time the Federal Reserve was forced to cut interest rates in a hurry -- in October 1998 -- it was to protect the United States from a fast-spreading currency crisis in Russia, after more than a year of economic turmoil in Asia.
Exporters have struggled to adjust to soaring inflation, a fast-rising currency and, with some irony, stricter enforcement of labor laws that make it harder to hire regular workers on a seasonal basis.
Mining increased in England, with the silver boom of the 12th century helping to fuel a fast-expanding currency.
A faster pace of currency appreciation offers a more powerful weapon: it will help to reduce imported inflation, especially of food and raw materials.
As Cembalest puts it in the spring/summer issue of "On My Mind," a publication for JPMorgan Private Bank clients, "With job creation needs high and exporter profit margins already under pressure, it is not in China's self-interest to allow an even faster rate of currency appreciation.
Those countries' currencies were being pounded as well, forcing the NAVs down further and faster than the currencies and the market price.
And they covered themselves, as they thought, by loaning in their own money, rather than fast appreciating local currency.
