Should investors enter the dragon or greet the elephant?

As global investors we face a dilemma — whether to make the next round of investment in the once solid developed markets or always fragile but promising emerging markets. Conventional wisdom argues that developed nations historically lead the emerging world out of recessions. Is this time any different? While a return to economic stability in the developed world is a prerequisite, the burden of driving growth will fall more than ever on the shoulders of the big new emerging markets of the ‘dragon’ China and the ‘elephant’ India. In the next few years, China will likely overtake Japan to become the world’s second largest economy. A rare and unpredictable year for China While ‘tiger’ often suffixes China, and ox metaphors are du jour, our edgier ‘dragon’ underscores the unpredictability of 2009’s economic outcome, pivoting around a heroic fiscal stimulus plan and China’s large collateral impact on other emerging markets. A