Over the past 2 months, I've talked about the problems facing the emerging markets (EM) - especially those countries running high current account deficits that have found their currencies coming under heavy pressure. As a result, EM central banks have been trying to smooth out the falls in their currencies by using some of their reserves. The graphic below shows the size of reserves for many key central banks (as of Jan 31st 2014) as well as the percentage change of those reserves from 1 month ago (Dec 2013) and from 1 year ago (Jan 2013). Highlighted in yellow are the "fragile five " - the countries where large current account deficits have created worries which has been felt by declining stock markets and currencies in those countries. From these measures, the 1-year draw-down in reserves does not seem that steep in Brazil, India, and Turkey though its more noticeable in Indonesia and South Africa.