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EDITIONS CNN.com Asia CNN.com Europe CNNenEspanol.com CNNArabic.com ... set your edition Languages Spanish Portuguese German Italian Korean Arabic Japanese Time, Inc. Time.com People Fortune EW InStyle Business 2.0 Sour note as broke Asians face the music Asians are no longer saving From Lisa Barron CNN Correspondent HONG KONG, China Even Hong Kong's Canto pop star Kenny Bee has had to face the music. Last month the once wealthy heartthrob joined the growing ranks of Asians saddled with massive debts they cannot pay back. A tearful Bee told a news conference: "the economic situation is very bad. Many people like me suffer from negative equity, or are filing for bankruptcy." The rise in bankruptcies marks a dramatic shift in the way Asians are spending money. "Traditionally what the Asian consumer has done has been to save," says Paul Sheehan, banking analyst with ING. "What we have now over the past few years is that the consumer has been unleashed and just as everywhere in the world people have started to manage their consumption and they borrow more." Over the past decade, household debt as a total of the whole economy has more than doubled in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea. | |
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