Last week, periodicals predicted that China and India would withstand the worldwide market crash. They hadn’t bargained for the weather. After the worst January storms, ever, in China, Time’s Simon Elegant read ominous signs in the snow. ‘China’s Perfect Storm’ led “more than 100,000 buildings to collapse. Some 6,000 vehicles carrying 20,000 passengers were stranded on a highway. Some 100,000 people were without drinking water for several days. An electrical tower collapsed under the weight of the snow, cutting off power for 41 cities and counties.” Some Chinese suspected the government’s hand: “in a country where the public is constantly reminded of the omnipotence of the central government”, it’s easy to blame the leadership “for the weather, too”.

Newsweek’s ‘The Imperfect Storm’, found the economy had caught the chill. “I see all the signs of a boom-bust cycle,” says Robbert van Batenburg, head of research at the New York-based firm Louis Capital Markets in the article. Chief among those threats, he says, “are China’s huge trade imbalance and soaring inflation.”

Elsewhere, the news is a little more reassuring. In spite of last week’s suicide bombings, Time finds that President Bush’s deployment of 30,000 additional US troops in Iraq, beginning last January, has decreased the violence. In “The Surge At Year One” Michael Duffy and Mark Kuki say that, “One year and 937 US fatalities later, the surge is a fragile and limited success. (It) has helped stabilize the capital and its surroundings but has yet to spark the political gains that could set the stage for a larger American withdrawal.” The article congratulates American military strategy which, ironically, took a tip or two from Saddam Hussein!

... contd.