Belt-tightening needed to get the West out of its rut

The global sovereign debt crisis has been a much talked about topic in Asia with the general consensus being that this part of the world is somewhat immune to the problems in the West. By and large this is being attributed to the restructuring of monetary policies in the region following the Asian financial crisis in 1997. What has been a less covered topic is how the global private sector credit and housing crisis morphed into the current sovereign debt crisis and also how the devel…