The Global Financial Crisis put to the fore the challenges of managing liquidity and foreign assets at times of heightened volatility. Earlier concerns of some observers regarding the costs of precautionary hoarding notwithstanding the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) validated the buffer value of international reserves and active management of buffer funds. These issues are especially pertinent for commodity exporters where the high volatility of their commodity terms of trade translates into large shocks impacting the real exchange rate and the GDP. The history of Latin American countries provides ample examples where adverse terms of trade shocks terminated spells of ‘good time’ leading to capital flight and financial crises.