This land of Asia, dear children, shunned the easy profits promised by the peddlers of toxic derivative products and fancy collateralised debt obligations. Its banks eked out a respectable living through the sensible business of lending money, its manufacturers through the old-fashioned practice of making things. This is why Asia has avoided the financial near-collapse that rained down on the casinos of Wall Street and London. This is why, too, Asia will now become the sole motor of global growth.

That, unfortunately, is where this particular fairy tale ends. Any lingering fantasy that Asia could insulate itself from the storm raging through the rest of the world was swept aside last week.

Take Japan, a country whose once-precarious financial institutions now have low funding needs, a solid capital base and little exposure to subprime loans. Yet none of this prevented the stock market from shedding one-quarter of its value in five hair-raising sessions, nor an insurance company from becoming the first financial domino to topple. In shiny India, where the rupee and the stock market have been chasing each other downhill, the government launched a criminal investigation after rumours sparked a run on ICICI, the largest private bank.