Hope for us yet?

JAPAN may be about to break a 30-year-old cycle and not follow the US into recession, it has been claimed.

It appears that the country's economy may be buffered from slowdown by China's increasingly voracious demand for consumer goods. This goes back to an earlier RR argument - the emerging economies (with average growth of between 6% and 9%) will require trading partners.

Only time will tell what that means for the economic balance of power across the globe, and how bad we get it this time round. Tidal waves are moving.