Why? After all, the Asian Development Bank says that, excluding Japan – whose $4,300bn (€3,020bn, £2,950bn) economy is likely to shrink for the first time since 2001 – the region will grow at 5.8 per cent. That does not sound too shabby by US and European standards, even if it does not quite match the 9 per cent recorded in 2007, year of the wild – and evidently rampant – boar.
But that assumes, first, that the ADB's prediction holds firm. Until late summer, the bank was happily proclaiming Asian economies more or less immune from the financial system woes jolting western banks. At that time, apparently, inflation was the region's biggest concern.
The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the banking system's near-death experience (plus a slide in commodity prices) changed all that. The picture has darkened more quickly than almost anyone could have then imagined. Orders across Asia stopped in October. The ADB has twice downgraded its growth estimates as the sorry truth comes home that, if westerners are not spending, Asians have little cause to make things for them to buy. As companies across the region cut staff and hack profit forecasts, further downgrades to Asian growth estimates could well follow.