Dealing with a future of economic uncertainty

A decade ago, the world watched and wondered as East Asia endured the full force of a financial crisis, with currencies and asset prices across the region falling sharply, and millions of people cast back into absolute poverty.

It is a measure of how far East Asia has come in just 10 years that today, with a credit and housing crisis now sweeping the United States, and the US dollar dropping to new lows against other currencies, East Asia is watching and wondering about the impact.

There will be an impact, of course, just as the developed economies were affected by the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. In a globalized economy, there is no hiding place. But unless the situation in the world's biggest economy deteriorates suddenly or the downturn there is much deeper and longer than anticipated, developing East Asia should emerge with lower - we estimate 1-2 percentage points lower than 2007 - but still strong growth rates.