With China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, and Hong Kong on your list of overseas markets beset with trouble it seems as most of the major Asian economies are doing extremely poorly.

Does anyone have any predictions on how this will effect the regions?

(You might ask: isn't Pakistan supposed to be having trouble? Yes, but they've put an artificial floor on their stock market, so it can't go down.)

'You might ask, well, how did I get here?' Anyways, Pakistan's market is dead, and the money is running away, so their problem is worse.

Cleveland has it bad. But developing countries have it much, much worse.

It really depends how much of the population is still farming. The more farmers, the better off they'll be.

Anyways, yep, everything is going to get a lot more expensive for then, temporarily, until they start pulling their money out of the US, and we experience capital flight. We're having a joint, worldwide financial contraction, quite massive. So globalization is here to stay, since it got here several centuries ago, but the world is flat crap is gone gone gone.

max
['So there's that, anyways.']

The problem is that many folks over estimated the robustness of Asian economies. They talked about how Asian demand could "insulate" them from a US recession.

There was one very large problem overlooked. In China/India there is no real middle class who could buy stuff at WESTERN prices. If an Indian engineer (a middle class profession) is making 1/3 of a Western engineer then how is he/she going to pay for the latest goodies like DVDs or cellphones or even a 42" plasma TV? Especially at the prices Multinationals charge? Not bloody likely (see large black market.)

Globalization as dictated by the eelights, finance and multinationals is being unraveled.

Perhaps Dick Fuld should consider himself lucky he only got decked. If I were a 3rd world tycoon or financier, I'd be looking for a safe hiding spot and/or hiring more security.

Remember that currency values and stock market levels are not linked in any fixed way. The Japanese yen has appreciated considerably, but (partly for that very reason) the stock market is tanking, yesterday falling below the deepest trough in the 1990's post-bubble period. Vietnam had a serious (30%/year) inflation issue before the US meltdown began.

(None of which contradicts the basic point that this will go hard on developing countries.)

It really depends how much of the population is still farming. The more farmers, the better off they'll be.

Max, that would be a false assumption of kamikaze-like proportions. Consider first that those currently farming---in the southern regions of the world at this time of the year---are disastrously dependent upon the agricultural technologies of the United States. Machinery; high-productivity seed; fertilizers; herbicidal compounds and GE practices, all designed to increase productivity in the field will now become obscenely expensive for the farmer to buy.

This risks a two-fold agricultural event with the same unthinkable outcome. First, those farmers unable to purchase the things needed will abandon their farms and migrate toward the urban population centers, seeking other forms of employment. Second, those remaining on their farms will exhibit a reduced ability to get their crops in the ground---an event that itself will demonstrate a dual outcome, being (a) less food flowing into the global grocery store, and (b) an exorbitant price for those goods when they finally DO reach the shelves of that store.

We are, after all, entering that half of the year when our fresh produce comes from the southern half of the planet. If their ability to produce food is reduced, one might consider if the government of Peru, for example, would really force its own citizens to starve---just to meet a production quota for a U.S. grocery store....

Of course, the epicenter, America is now the focus of corruption, you name it we distributed it. What category do you want to pick. Especially the wars, the economy, or just plain religion were do you want to start debate, America looks like the best place to raise hell. But was abused by its leadership to power and money. We the people appear to be just the one percent who own America. And the media is the key players.

The Transparency is not there yet, Please MSNBC Joe in the Moring has not told the truth, nor Brokaw, or CNN, and Absolutely Fox News ironically, so neo-Con Republican, so pro life, so fair and balanced, yet is the most severe abortionist of news.

Actually what America is about to witnessing is complete embarrassment by these first line Journalist, their program managers and owners. Here America might think to keep them in place so as to obviously show America their dysfunctional capabilities as the Fonzi commercial displayed. Saying to everyone, we, the mainstream media, we who have been delivering news for decades have abuse our power, we are bad boys and girls trying to guide the American electorate for the powerful and rich. We know we did lie, we are sorry, we wish for the American electorate forgiveness us. This must be done over and over, and over for months to record for history.

What am I trying to describe here? To change one of the deals pitched out that many in hate radio already describe the Democrats will shut down talk hate radio. What is a huge positive suggestion and an analogy that I would like to propose is that these first line Journalist themselves come forward and address the electorate in open public confessions across the board to describe the deliberate direct planed coordinated abuse in misinformation to the electorate by defining detail and describe any questions the electorate might have as in emails that are read but never addressed adequately.

Conservatism is a laugh here at this juncture in American history; we the people should not have this kind of a debate if we were in a true Conservative leadership dynamics. Look this all appears as treachery and should be bench marked and documented for future development in what could be called a Constitutional violation of the free speech. America we certainly have come to understand that there should be a commerce free market yet we know we don’t have one, what have had for almost a century popularized is the Jekyll Island banking system for the rich and powerful who actually are much of the Europeans who control the market place of Americans, and they goofed big time.

Perhaps, were as we the people need to take a hard look at free speech treachery. Bush and Company being very influence by the Arabs here hates “The American experiment�. The denial is horrendous, and as for me the best of the best have been fooled, we are in a mess and need to admit it. We the people hold this truth to be self evident that Bush and Company is the problem was problem, now and in the past and need to be held accountable to the limits of the Constitution.

Global market failure, by the way, is spelled
"s i x y e a r s i n I r a q" or " The consequences of Mr. Bush attempting to spread liberty and democracy to the Middle East!" -Kevo

This is very similar to what happened in 1929. The Wall Street Crash dried up liquidity in a big way. Bankers who had highly leveraged bets on stocks started hoarding cash. This is what sent the German economy into the pits: their economy was dependent on loans from the U.S. which they partially used to pay reperations. Of course, the reperations were owed to England and France who were in debt to the U.S. This interlocking debt structure was one reason the entire world economy collapsed due to the collapse in the U.S.

I just hope things are not going to get nearly as bad as they were in the 1930s!

In Russia, for example, banks and corporations rushed to borrow abroad, because dollar interest rates were lower than ruble rates. So while the Russian government was accumulating an impressive hoard of foreign exchange, Russian corporations and banks were running up equally impressive foreign debts. Now their credit lines have been cut off, and they're in desperate straits.

Perhaps the silver lining in all this.

As long as Russia fails to democratize and liberalize, keeping Russia poor is not a bad thing. This will continue apace as long as oil is lower as well.