MONDAY  The news on Monday morning was not good. Wall Street had finished down the previous Friday, and there was news that Fitch, one of the main rating agencies, had downgraded Ambac Financial, one of the two main monoline bond insurers.

This development might not appear to have had much import for traders in Asia, but it did. Fears for the workings of the financial system had grown intense, as the ripples from last year’s credit crisis continued to be felt. The monoline insurers, which provide guarantees for municipal bonds and structured credit products, had come to embody concerns that the whole elaborate architecture of financial infrastructure was in danger of collapse.