ITHACA In recent months, emerging economies have experienced capital flow whiplash. Indications that the US Federal Reserve might taper its quantitative easing (QE) drove investors to reduce their exposure to emerging markets, sharply weakening their currencies and causing their equity prices to tumble.

So, instead of frowning on capital controls and pushing for financial openness, the International Monetary Fund should be in the business of actively helping countries implement such policies. It should also enlarge its emergency credit lines to act more as a lender of last resort to developing nations hit by financial whiplash.

But this wave started, and if I question the wave, or try to stop the wave or look back at the wave, I often have the experience of whiplash or the potential of my neck breaking. But if I go with the wave, and I trust the wave and I move with the wave, I go to the next place, and it happens logically and organically and truthfully.