Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The banking industry's travails in the U.S. and Europe have shattered a decade of relative calm in global finance, according to a research report published earlier this month by the International Monetary Fund.

The CHART OF THE DAY illustrates the number of banking, currency and debt crises worldwide each year from 1970 to 2007, as compiled by IMF economists Luc Laeven and Fabian Valencia. The debt category consists of sovereign-bond defaults and restructurings.

About 30 percent of these events were ``systemic banking crises,'' defined as periods when ``a country's corporate and financial sectors experience a large number of defaults and financial institutions and corporations face great difficulties repaying contracts on time,'' they wrote.

U.S. and U.K. banks sank into crises last year, the economists wrote in a working paper titled ``Systemic Banking Crises: A New Database.'' There was only one other financial disaster by their count -- a currency collapse in Myanmar, one of the world's poorest countries -- and none at all in 2006.

In all, 42 events qualified as bank, currency or debt crises between 2000 and 2007, Laeven and Valencia found. This matched the total for a single year: 1994, the most turbulent time for the world's financial system in the period studied.

``Financial crises can be damaging and contagious, prompting calls for swift policy responses,'' they wrote. ``Some crises turn out to be contagious, rapidly spreading to countries with no apparent vulnerabilities.''

To contact the reporter on this story: David Wilson in New York at dwilson@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 30, 2008 11:42 EDT