Reversing Roles

I just read an interesting article about the global financial crisis. As you may have heard, it's not quite hitting Asia as hard as it is Europe and the States. However, it's indirectly hurting a lot of larger Asian countries because exports are so key to their economy, much like any pro-globalization countries these days. Because money is getting tight for Europe and the States, they're buying less and can't support a massive amount of exports.

What's interesting is that China has made a very proactive attempt to help Europe and the States with bail-out funds and short-term liquidity aid. It's a very interesting dynamic; 30 or 40 years ago, China would have been the one holding back and Europe and the States would have been the ones trying to open up global markets. It's reversed. This is something that's been talked about many times in my classes, so it's not anything that's too new of an idea, but it's surprising to see just how active Asia is becoming. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. Europe has been doing a lot lately to actually try and withdraw from global markets and into it's own continent, but it looks like Asia doesn't want to let it. We'll have to see what ends up happening.

(Finance isn't exactly my biggest subject, so I don't know too much, but I did see that China's looking to provide funds to the States and Europe without having anything to do with the IMF. I don't know how legal or illegal that is, or how wise, but it kinda looks like no one is really interested in the IMF )

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de83a2ca-a08d-11dd-80a0-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1