While we have been upbeat on Asia for several months, and there is no doubt that Asia is leading global recovery and almost all Asian stock markets have out-performed those in Europe and the Americas significantly, it is still timely to note that the golden era of massive growth in economies and wealth in the last decades of the last century are not the status quo, but a thing of history.

The Asian Development Bank's latest estimates are also upbeat, but contain several caveat emptors and warnings against basing predictions on pre Asian crisis and global slowdown behaviour.

According to Xinhua's Business Weekly, Asian miracle economies have lost their past gloss

"...Now, as Asia's economies claw back from their second slowdown in five years, after 30 years of almost uninterrupted growth, economists caution that a quick return to double-digit growth is unlikely due to underlying structural problems..."