China woes drag STI 4.5% lower in 1st week of 2016

TO SAY it hasn't been a good start to 2016 might be an understatement, given the plunges that global equities suffered this past week. China has been blamed for the losses, perhaps a convenient scapegoat for overvaluation of risk assets rooted in the easy money policies that have been pursued by major central banks for several years now, starting with the US Federal Reserve and then the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan.

Even so, the Chinese authorities' inept attempts to stem the bleeding in their stock markets has undoubtedly contributed to the contagion-selling everywhere. On Thursday, for example, China's regulators removed ill-…