That cushion can provide protection from financial market turbulence. Indonesia, South Korea, India and others have tapped reserves this year to defend their currencies from extreme volatility.
"SCHIZOPHRENIC" INVESTORS
The IMF itself seems to have learned a few lessons from its experience in Asia, especially on how deep budget cuts can hurt a country's economic growth and its citizens.
Its November 1997 statement announcing Indonesia's bailout arrangement spelled out the IMF's policy prescription: tight fiscal and monetary policies and "substantial" fiscal measures to keep the budget in surplus.
The IMF at the time expected Indonesia's growth, which had been around 8 percent before the crisis, to slow to 5 percent in the first year of the program and 3 percent in the second. In fact, Indonesia's economy contracted by 13.1 percent in 1998 and grew by only 0.8 percent in 1999.
Former IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn acknowledged in February 2011 that the IMF's reform program had been "harmful and painful" for the Indonesian people.
Many economists worry that Europe's austerity measures, much like those in Indonesia in the late 1990s, will end up doing even more damage to the economy, worsening the debt picture.
IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard said investors were "schizophrenic" about austerity and growth.
"They react positively to news of fiscal consolidation, but then react negatively later, when consolidation leads to lower growth -- which it often does," Blanchard said.
WHO IS NEXT?
European countries are the obvious candidates for imminent downgrade. S&P's move could come any day. Moody's said on December 12 it will revisit its European ratings in the first quarter of 2012.
While downgrades and the threat of more have received the most media attention this year, Fitch said its sovereign rating actions year-to-date were almost evenly split between upgrades and downgrades.
Since August 5, when Standard & Poor's stripped the United States of its AAA-rating, countries including Indonesia, Brazil, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Paraguay, Peru, Kazakhstan and Israel have received upgrades from at least one of the world's big three ratings agencies.
Next on the upgrade list may be the Philippines. Its leaders
expressed some disappointment that Indonesia got the nod from Fitch first, although S&P revised its outlook to "positive" on December 16.
But it is the negative actions that pose the global economic threat. The advanced economies in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have 2012 borrowing needs estimated at $10.5 trillion. A number this large means even a small increase in borrowing costs is meaningful.
"OECD debt managers are facing unprecedented funding challenges in meeting higher-than-anticipated, strong borrowing needs," the OECD said in a report on sovereign debt.