KUALA LUMPUR — Early last week, many major Asian stock markets opened with sharp declines in their indices, Japan's stock market being apparently the most notable, dropping nearly 10 percent, the largest decline in over 30 years. There were, at least for half a morning, incipient fears cutting across the region and beyond as to whether that was the first sign of another round of financial crises, especially in view of the cyclical nature of such crises, recurring every decade or decade and a half.

However, this latest huge drops in Asian stock markets appeared to have been a temporary phenomenon, as the markets quickly rebounded. It would appear that this brief plunge in Asian stock markets was more a knee-jerk reaction to the downturn in US stock markets toward the end of the previous week.