American and European banks are already developed. Also, the bulk of companies/financial institutions that have gone under are American: Fannie & Freddie (the bank where this crisis started), Washington Mutual, AIG, Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia.

However, Asian banks/financial institutions are also starting to feel the pinch of the credit squeeze/crunch now.

1. In Japan, Yamamoto Life, that country's biggest insurer, has gone belly up.

2. In Hong Kong, the Hampton Tatami Hotel is in foreclosure, DBS, a regional bank with branches in Singapore, has also required government assistance and recently, there was a run on the Bank of East Asia.

3. In China, Citic Pacific's profit has plummeted 58% and has had to ask for help from its parent, Citic Group. Also, economic growth has slowed from 11% in the third quarter of 2008 to 9.9% in the fourth quarter. Yet principal government officials, especially Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang, is still insisting that this isn't a slowdown. On top of that, a few weeks ago, in a speech, Tsang had the audacity to say that Hong Kong will get through this economic crisis with "mainland pride" so he is basically putting all of his eggs in one basket. Wait a minute. Is a decrease of more than 1% not a slowdown? Also, people on Bloomberg are forecasting a significant slowdown in Chinese economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2008 into the first and perhaps the second quarter of 2009 so does that mean that Tsang is the only smart person in Hong Kong and the Bloomberg analysts are idiots? That's ludicrous. OK, it's not as bad as what the US is experiencing, but it's definitely a slowdown.

The above examples make it clear that Asia is feeling the effects of the global economic slowdown as much as people in the west. The only difference is that the media doesn't always report businesses failures accurately. Also, there are so many corrupt officials in Asia. For example, Joseph Yam, the head of the Hong Kong monetary authority, is the world's only central banker without a contract, meaning that he can stay for as long as he likes, even though this financial collapse happened on his watch. In other words, because Hong Kong is Chinese territory now and people aren't allowed to criticize the central government in Beijing and Donald Tsang is ruling with what seems like an iron fist, there is basically no accountability (Joseph Yam doesn't have a contract, but he can stay indefinitely because Donald Tsang and Beijing want him there). This is most likely also true in India (i.e. the economy is bad, but we don't know about it yet or the full brunt of the economic collapse has yet to be felt). India is a democratic country so the latter explanation/reason is more likely to be correct.

The bottom line is that this subprime crisis certainly started in the US, but now, everybody is starting to feel the effects of it. If only the American and European economies were slowing down, it should have been called the 'American credit crunch' or 'European credit crunch' and not the 'GLOBAL credit crunch'.