Desmond Lachman, a former economist at the International Monetary Fund, sees history repeating itself. "This is beginning to look like the Asian crisis all over again," he says, "with Hungary playing the role of Thailand."

In the Asian financial turmoil of 1997-98, the collapse of the Thai baht sparked a panic that drove down currencies and threw governments, banks and companies into crisis. Then the IMF created a bad name for itself in Asia that still lingers by onerous micromanaging of "conditionality" in return for rescue lending - the demand to dismantle the national Indonesian clove marketing monopoly being the most notorious example.