Globalisation was not supposed to work like this: the rich get poorer, while the poor get poorer still. Take Vietnam. This decades's rampant growth is petering out so fast that the government plans to spend nearly a quarter of gross domestic product propping up the economy. Everything that contributed to Vietnam's rise fed its subsequent downfall. Between 2006 and 2008, foreigners ploughed investment, direct and portfolio, into the country. Leverage rose.

Like other Asian countries with asset bubbles inflated by foreign money, the Vietnamese authorities pushed up interest rates - making it all the harder for it now to change course. The usual caveats apply: the proposed $6bn stimulus package and other spending will stretch over several years and include projects already on the table. Even so, this is a big bite for a country with fiscal revenues worth less than 25 per cent of GDP and budget deficits consistently over 2 per cent of GDP.