The credit crisis has not been kind to emerging market currencies. Virtually all of them have declined by double digits (in percentage terms) against the USD. Such currencies may receive a boost from the International Monetary Fund, which recently announced plans to make more cash available, especially on a short-term basis. Previously, many analysts and policymakers had written off the IMF as irrelevant, since private sources of capital had gradually become available to countries that previously depended on the IMF for funding. However, as investors flee emerging markets en masse, such countries once again find themselves in dire straits. Iceland, for example, is likely to take advantage of the offer, as it has exhausted most of its other options for shoring up its ailing economy and currency. Bloomberg News reports:

The IMF has been at the center of some of the biggest financial bailouts of the past three decades, helping broker solutions to the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s and rescues for Mexico, Russia, Brazil and Asia in the 1990s.

Read More: IMF Speeds Access to Funds as Emerging Markets Buckle