The financial sector may have become dependent on the trading profits from oil. As evidence accumulates over weakening demand and strong supply, I believe oil prices could collapse,

The Chinese economy has started to slow due to excess capacity. The rapid investment-led boom of the last five years has borrowed growth from the future.

Government officials are still learning to trust the market mechanism. They are containing inflation, but you're building up more and more distortions in the economy.

If growth in the U.S. slows significantly, all of Asia's exporters will feel it.

Chinese tourism was the factor that kept Hong Kong from recession,

In particular, if another Bush government moves on to Iran, then oil prices would go very high and really threaten China's economic development.

In the 1990s, the state banks shoveled those deposits to inefficient state companies. The end result was a large number of nonperforming loans.

In the end, this sort of protectionism doesn't help you. You never stop this sort of thing.

India and Korea, in particular, should raise interest rates to contain financial speculation.

The two city economies became rich by being the gateways to the rest of the world for their large neighbors. However, globalization has allowed their neighbors to bypass them and access the global stage directly. Both are trying to get back into the game, but in different ways.