> Managing fiscal policy for a city state is a bit different
> than the world's number two economy.
Not anymore. Japan and Singapore just signed a free trade deal; they're both high-tech metropoles with heavily managed economies, and Singapore has played the same stabilizing role vis-a-vis Malaysia and Indonesia as Japan vis-a-vis Southeast Asia. If even Singapore, in many ways a relatively conservative and cautious culture, is being forced to stimulate their economy, the rest of East Asia will follow. I suspect they must know, on some level, that exports to the US aren't going to bail them out this time.
-- Dennis