Final answer:
The East Asian crises were characterized by internal financial fragility, capital flight resulting in speculative attacks, and a drastic drop in currency stability leading to banking failures and deep recessions.
Step-by-step explanation:
The common features of the East Asian crises are internal financial fragility, capital reversal and speculative attacks, and the collapse of currency stability.
In the East Asian crisis, large inflows of foreign capital were initially greeted as a positive economic indicator but became a concern as they turned into rapid outflows, illustrating a fragile financial system internally unable to cope with such volatility. The sudden withdrawal of foreign investments led to speculative attacks, where investors bet against the local currencies expecting them to devalue, thus exacerbating the situation. Consequently, the local currencies' exchange rates plummeted, often by 50% or more. Banks, which had lent extensively in foreign currency, could not recover the U.S. dollars they owed and went bankrupt due to the mismatch in their balance sheets. The precipitous drop in the exchange rate and the ensuing credit crunch resulted in aggregate demand collapsing, sending the economy into a deep recession, as shown by the events in Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, and Indonesia during the 1997-1998 period.