Chinese walker

FOR much of the past year the fast-growing economies of the emerging world watched the Western financial hurricane from afar. Their own banks held few of the mortgage-based assets that undid the rich world’s financial firms. Commodity exporters were thriving, thanks to high prices for raw materials. China’s economic juggernaut powered on. And, from Budapest to Brasília, an abundance of credit fuelled domestic demand. Even as talk mounted of the rich world suffering its worst financial collapse since the Depression, emerging economies seemed a long way from the centre of the storm.

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