Massive wealth erosion sure to affect demand before long

It will come as no consolation at all to those Hong Kong investors who have seen their shareholdings in HSBC Holdings dwindle to just a quarter of their former value over the last 17 months, but there are plenty more people in the same boat.

According to a study published this week by the Asian Development Bank, last year's financial crash wiped an estimated US$9.6 trillion off the value of East Asia's financial assets - its stocks, bonds and bank loans (excluding Japan's markets).

Now, US$9.6 trillion is clearly a lot of money to lose. It's obviously not the sort of loose change that goes missing down the back of the sofa cushions. Even so, for most of us it's tough to visualise.

Saying it is 96 followed by 11 zeros doesn't really help. Neither does converting it into Hong Kong dollars and saying it equals HK$51 trillion, or 51 followed by 12 zeros.

Pointing out that US$9.6 trillion would make a stack of US dollar bills one million kilometres high - or more than twice the distance from the earth to the moon - makes the size of the loss a little bit easier to picture, but not much.

No, if you really want to get your head around what a US$9.6 trillion loss feels like, just consider that the entire economic output of the whole of the East Asian region (again excluding Japan) last year only came to somewhere around US$8.8 trillion.