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Comment (THIS was the week the credit crisis touched down in east Asia.
This was the week economies cushioned by some of the world's largest current account surpluses, owning a large chunk of the foreign exchange reserves, largely unscathed by the initial sub-prime catastrophes, felt the shockwaves pounding into their own financial systems.
In most of the major Asian markets, until this week, the challenge had been to ride out the equities markets contagion, panicked liquidations by foreign funds and local institutions and buying strikes by all classes of investors that inevitably flowed from nightly routs on US and European markets.
The damage to equities values has been immense; Tokyo, as measured by the Nikkei 225 index, lost 25.4 per cent this week, Hong Kong 19.4 per cent, Singapore 16 per cent and Seoul 12.5 per cent.
But for the first time in 15 months it was the potential vulnerabilities of the large Asian economies that came under searching...
