Readers of the financial media and users of trading terminals will have become accustomed to seeing graphs with sharp downward curves in recent months. However, not all of them are directly related to the sub-prime mess. Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange Index, known as the VN Index, has been in free fall for most of 2008 for reasons that have as much to do with growth as sub-prime failure.
After peaking at 1,100 in November 2007, the VN began a steady decline, halving in value by March...
