Chapter 3. Emerging Markets Decouple

The Great Wall [of China] is evidence of a historical inability of people in this part of the planet to communicate, to confer and jointly determine how best to deploy enormous reserves of human energy and intellect.1

—Ryszard Kapuscinski

The recovery started in emerging markets, which no longer followed developed markets’ lead. The good news is that the bigger emerging markets have indeed “emerged,” with strong institutions; the bad news is that unsustainably cheap money in China was needed for the recovery.

After Lehman, concern at first shifted not to Europe, but to the emerging markets. Everything seemed set for a replay of the disasters of the 1990s, when sudden exits of international money had led first ...

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