Meanwhile, in China, the government is concerned that a weakening stock market will spoil next month's Olympic Games (er... what?) and has taken a rather, well, top-down approach: it's forbidden anyone from saying anything bad about equities.

In a bluntly worded notice distributed to fund managers, including foreign-Chinese joint ventures, China’s securities watchdog warned fund employees not to say anything publicly that could harm the stability of the market.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission, which issued the notice, did not make overt reference to the Olympics, but the message was not lost on local fund managers, who linked the notice to a broader effort to avoid market turmoil in the pre-Olympic period.
“Fund company executives, fund managers and other important staff should be very careful about their speeches and blog content, which may cause market fluctuations,” the notice says, adding that companies should be cautious about holding public forums “which may cause market fluctuations”.
A fund manager with a foreign-Chinese joint venture said his company had been told not to make any public comments at all, “particularly negative comments about the market”, which has fallen by more than 50 per cent since its peak last year. He said his company had been warned that its managers must not be quoted in newspapers, magazines, television or on the radio.

The significance of the Olympics, of course, is that the Olympics are the official China Is Now A Serious Country ceremony, and anything, including an unhealthy equity market, that detracts from the general Seriousness of several weeks of very muscly people in sweat-stained vests chucking stuff around and leaping over things is therefore Very Bad for China...