diff --git a/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/aws.go b/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/aws.go
index 811c2e107e8..683eedf84ad 100644
--- a/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/aws.go
+++ b/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/aws.go
@@ -228,13 +228,57 @@ type awsSdkEC2 struct {
 
 type awsSDKProvider struct {
 	creds *credentials.Credentials
+
+	mutex          sync.Mutex
+	regionDelayers map[string]*CrossRequestRetryDelay
 }
 
-func addHandlers(h *request.Handlers) {
+func newAWSSDKProvider(creds *credentials.Credentials) *awsSDKProvider {
+	return &awsSDKProvider{
+		creds:          creds,
+		regionDelayers: make(map[string]*CrossRequestRetryDelay),
+	}
+}
+
+func (p *awsSDKProvider) addHandlers(regionName string, h *request.Handlers) {
 	h.Sign.PushFrontNamed(request.NamedHandler{
 		Name: "k8s/logger",
 		Fn:   awsHandlerLogger,
 	})
+
+	delayer := p.getCrossRequestRetryDelay(regionName)
+	if delayer != nil {
+		h.Sign.PushFrontNamed(request.NamedHandler{
+			Name: "k8s/delay-presign",
+			Fn:   delayer.BeforeSign,
+		})
+
+		h.AfterRetry.PushFrontNamed(request.NamedHandler{
+			Name: "k8s/delay-afterretry",
+			Fn:   delayer.AfterRetry,
+		})
+	}
+}
+
+// Get a CrossRequestRetryDelay, scoped to the region, not to the request.
+// This means that when we hit a limit on a call, we will delay _all_ calls to the API.
+// We do this to protect the AWS account from becoming overloaded and effectively locked.
+// We also log when we hit request limits.
+// Note that this delays the current goroutine; this is bad behaviour and will
+// likely cause k8s to become slow or unresponsive for cloud operations.
+// However, this throttle is intended only as a last resort.  When we observe
+// this throttling, we need to address the root cause (e.g. add a delay to a
+// controller retry loop)
+func (p *awsSDKProvider) getCrossRequestRetryDelay(regionName string) *CrossRequestRetryDelay {
+	p.mutex.Lock()
+	defer p.mutex.Unlock()
+
+	delayer, found := p.regionDelayers[regionName]
+	if !found {
+		delayer = NewCrossRequestRetryDelay()
+		p.regionDelayers[regionName] = delayer
+	}
+	return delayer
 }
 
 func (p *awsSDKProvider) Compute(regionName string) (EC2, error) {
@@ -243,7 +287,7 @@ func (p *awsSDKProvider) Compute(regionName string) (EC2, error) {
 		Credentials: p.creds,
 	}))
 
-	addHandlers(&service.Handlers)
+	p.addHandlers(regionName, &service.Handlers)
 
 	ec2 := &awsSdkEC2{
 		ec2: service,
@@ -257,7 +301,7 @@ func (p *awsSDKProvider) LoadBalancing(regionName string) (ELB, error) {
 		Credentials: p.creds,
 	}))
 
-	addHandlers(&elbClient.Handlers)
+	p.addHandlers(regionName, &elbClient.Handlers)
 
 	return elbClient, nil
 }
@@ -268,7 +312,7 @@ func (p *awsSDKProvider) Autoscaling(regionName string) (ASG, error) {
 		Credentials: p.creds,
 	}))
 
-	addHandlers(&client.Handlers)
+	p.addHandlers(regionName, &client.Handlers)
 
 	return client, nil
 }
@@ -458,7 +502,7 @@ func init() {
 				},
 				&credentials.SharedCredentialsProvider{},
 			})
-		aws := &awsSDKProvider{creds: creds}
+		aws := newAWSSDKProvider(creds)
 		return newAWSCloud(config, aws)
 	})
 }
diff --git a/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/retry_handler.go b/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/retry_handler.go
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..d6d68812899
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/retry_handler.go
@@ -0,0 +1,154 @@
+/*
+Copyright 2015 The Kubernetes Authors All rights reserved.
+
+Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+limitations under the License.
+*/
+
+package aws
+
+import (
+	"math"
+	"sync"
+	"time"
+
+	"github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/aws/awserr"
+	"github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/aws/request"
+	"github.com/golang/glog"
+)
+
+const (
+	decayIntervalSeconds = 20
+	decayFraction        = 0.8
+	maxDelay             = 60 * time.Second
+)
+
+// CrossRequestRetryDelay inserts delays before AWS calls, when we are observing RequestLimitExceeded errors
+// Note that we share a CrossRequestRetryDelay across multiple AWS requests; this is a process-wide back-off,
+// whereas the aws-sdk-go implements a per-request exponential backoff/retry
+type CrossRequestRetryDelay struct {
+	backoff Backoff
+}
+
+// Create a new CrossRequestRetryDelay
+func NewCrossRequestRetryDelay() *CrossRequestRetryDelay {
+	c := &CrossRequestRetryDelay{}
+	c.backoff.init()
+	return c
+}
+
+// Added to the Sign chain; called before each request
+func (c *CrossRequestRetryDelay) BeforeSign(r *request.Request) {
+	now := time.Now()
+	delay := c.backoff.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+	if delay > 0 {
+		glog.Warningf("Inserting delay before AWS request (%s) to avoid RequestLimitExceeded: %s",
+			describeRequest(r), delay.String())
+		r.Config.SleepDelay(delay)
+
+		// Avoid clock skew problems
+		r.Time = now
+	}
+}
+
+// Return a user-friendly string describing the request, for use in log messages
+func describeRequest(r *request.Request) string {
+	service := r.ClientInfo.ServiceName
+
+	name := "?"
+	if r.Operation != nil {
+		name = r.Operation.Name
+	}
+
+	return service + "::" + name
+}
+
+// Added to the AfterRetry chain; called after any error
+func (c *CrossRequestRetryDelay) AfterRetry(r *request.Request) {
+	if r.Error == nil {
+		return
+	}
+	awsError, ok := r.Error.(awserr.Error)
+	if !ok {
+		return
+	}
+	if awsError.Code() == "RequestLimitExceeded" {
+		c.backoff.ReportError()
+		glog.Warningf("Got RequestLimitExceeded error on AWS request (%s)",
+			describeRequest(r))
+	}
+}
+
+// Backoff manages a backoff that varies based on the recently observed failures
+type Backoff struct {
+	mutex sync.Mutex
+
+	// We count all requests & the number of requests which hit a
+	// RequestLimit.  We only really care about 'recent' requests, so we
+	// decay the counts exponentially to bias towards recent values.
+	countErrorsRequestLimit float32
+	countRequests           float32
+	lastDecay               int64
+}
+
+func (b *Backoff) init() {
+	b.lastDecay = time.Now().Unix()
+	// Bias so that if the first request hits the limit we don't immediately apply the full delay
+	b.countRequests = 4
+}
+
+// Computes the delay required for a request, also updating internal state to count this request
+func (b *Backoff) ComputeDelayForRequest(now time.Time) time.Duration {
+	b.mutex.Lock()
+	defer b.mutex.Unlock()
+
+	// Apply exponential decay to the counters
+	timeDeltaSeconds := now.Unix() - b.lastDecay
+	if timeDeltaSeconds > decayIntervalSeconds {
+		intervals := float64(timeDeltaSeconds) / float64(decayIntervalSeconds)
+		decay := float32(math.Pow(decayFraction, intervals))
+		b.countErrorsRequestLimit *= decay
+		b.countRequests *= decay
+		b.lastDecay = now.Unix()
+	}
+
+	// Count this request
+	b.countRequests += 1.0
+
+	// Compute the failure rate
+	errorFraction := float32(0.0)
+	if b.countRequests > 0.5 {
+		// Avoid tiny residuals & rounding errors
+		errorFraction = b.countErrorsRequestLimit / b.countRequests
+	}
+
+	// Ignore a low fraction of errors
+	// This also allows them to time-out
+	if errorFraction < 0.1 {
+		return time.Duration(0)
+	}
+
+	// Delay by the max delay multiplied by the recent error rate
+	// (i.e. we apply a linear delay function)
+	// TODO: This is pretty arbitrary
+	delay := time.Nanosecond * time.Duration(float32(maxDelay.Nanoseconds())*errorFraction)
+	// Round down to the nearest second for sanity
+	return time.Second * time.Duration(int(delay.Seconds()))
+}
+
+// Called when we observe a throttling error
+func (b *Backoff) ReportError() {
+	b.mutex.Lock()
+	defer b.mutex.Unlock()
+
+	b.countErrorsRequestLimit += 1.0
+}
diff --git a/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/retry_handler_test.go b/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/retry_handler_test.go
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..5a615e2637d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/retry_handler_test.go
@@ -0,0 +1,135 @@
+/*
+Copyright 2016 The Kubernetes Authors All rights reserved.
+
+Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+limitations under the License.
+*/
+
+package aws
+
+import (
+	"testing"
+	"time"
+)
+
+// There follows a group of tests for the backoff logic.  There's nothing
+// particularly special about the values chosen: if we tweak the values in the
+// backoff logic then we might well have to update the tests.  However the key
+// behavioural elements should remain (e.g. no errors => no backoff), and these
+// are each tested by one of the tests below.
+
+// Test that we don't apply any delays when there are no errors
+func TestBackoffNoErrors(t *testing.T) {
+	b := &Backoff{}
+	b.init()
+
+	now := time.Now()
+	for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
+		d := b.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+		if d.Nanoseconds() != 0 {
+			t.Fatalf("unexpected delay during no-error case")
+		}
+		now = now.Add(time.Second)
+	}
+}
+
+// Test that we always apply a delay when there are errors, and also that we
+// don't "flap" - that our own delay doesn't cause us to oscillate between
+// delay and no-delay.
+func TestBackoffAllErrors(t *testing.T) {
+	b := &Backoff{}
+	b.init()
+
+	now := time.Now()
+	// Warm up
+	for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
+		_ = b.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+		b.ReportError()
+		now = now.Add(time.Second)
+	}
+
+	for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
+		d := b.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+		b.ReportError()
+		if d.Seconds() < 5 {
+			t.Fatalf("unexpected short-delay during all-error case: %v", d)
+		}
+		t.Logf("delay @%d %v", i, d)
+		now = now.Add(d)
+	}
+}
+
+// Test that we do come close to our max delay, when we see all errors at 1
+// second intervals (this simulates multiple concurrent requests, because we
+// don't wait for delay in between requests)
+func TestBackoffHitsMax(t *testing.T) {
+	b := &Backoff{}
+	b.init()
+
+	now := time.Now()
+	for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
+		_ = b.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+		b.ReportError()
+		now = now.Add(time.Second)
+	}
+
+	for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
+		d := b.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+		b.ReportError()
+		if float32(d.Nanoseconds()) < (float32(maxDelay.Nanoseconds()) * 0.95) {
+			t.Fatalf("expected delay to be >= 95 percent of max delay, was %v", d)
+		}
+		t.Logf("delay @%d %v", i, d)
+		now = now.Add(time.Second)
+	}
+}
+
+// Test that after a phase of errors, we eventually stop applying a delay once there are
+// no more errors.
+func TestBackoffRecovers(t *testing.T) {
+	b := &Backoff{}
+	b.init()
+
+	now := time.Now()
+
+	// Phase of all-errors
+	for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
+		_ = b.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+		b.ReportError()
+		now = now.Add(time.Second)
+	}
+
+	for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
+		d := b.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+		b.ReportError()
+		if d.Seconds() < 5 {
+			t.Fatalf("unexpected short-delay during all-error phase: %v", d)
+		}
+		t.Logf("error phase delay @%d %v", i, d)
+		now = now.Add(time.Second)
+	}
+
+	// Phase of no errors
+	for i := 0; i < 100; i++ {
+		_ = b.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+		now = now.Add(3 * time.Second)
+	}
+
+	for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
+		d := b.ComputeDelayForRequest(now)
+		if d.Seconds() != 0 {
+			t.Fatalf("unexpected delay during error recovery phase: %v", d)
+		}
+		t.Logf("no-error phase delay @%d %v", i, d)
+		now = now.Add(time.Second)
+	}
+}