While the market considers the fear of a Greek default, it is interesting to note that if you combine the populations of the basket case nations of Portugal, Ireland and Greece they are roughly equivalent to the population of Chongqing in China. As Spain starts to make headlines, it is also worth noting that at the peak of the property bubble, Spain, a country of 45 million people, was building more houses than Germany, France and Italy combined, who between them have a population of about 200 million. With this extraordinary construction boom fuelled by their banks it is no wonder their banking system is likely to come under pressure (similar to US with subprime loans). At Warren Buffet' recent Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Mr Buffet said that "during the GFC, the US had recapitalised its banks very well but not so for the Europeans". However, while economic news from these nations fill business headlines, fundamentally macro analysts believe Asian markets will be driven by its own fundamentals rather than those nations mentioned above. As Asian markets decouple from the European problems tsunami waves travel far and wide so all markets become affected.