No matter what your economic model right now, the only available seating seems to be between a rock and a hard place. Having fired several shots across the West’s bows about debt – in a bid not to have their lending devalued – the Chinese don’t really want all that austerity getting out of hand….otherwise the fangwoi won’t keep on buying its exports.

Equally, in a country where living standards are rising very quickly for the few but still too slowly among the many, it’s bad policy to let apartment prices get out of hand – and beyond reach.

Fiscal tightening in the West and tighter credit at home both lie behind the latest economic figures from the CPR. While the official data show the country’s index above 50 (ie, growing) if one adds in seasonal factors, the result is effectively stagnation. According to Goldman Sachs, their formerly bullish outlook is going bear largely on the basis of its model measuring Chinese export sales and orders.

In Brazil, the situation is different – but equally disturbing. Some signs are the same: Industrial production slowed in the second quarter, and investors were unnerved as the Bovespa index plunged by 20% in the month from April 9, performing significantly worse than major indices around the globe. Many economists are more pessimistic than the IMF, and expect a sharp slowdown there later in the year.

The big difference between Brazil and the Asian tigers is that Brazil has low domestic savings – making the country more of a dodgey investment zone in a risk-averse global environment. Last month, the Brazilian central bank forecast 2010 foreign direct investment would total $38 billion – a steep drop from earlier forecasts of $45 billion.

Among cutting-edge investment advisors, there is a growing consensus that Brazil needs to accelerate the reform process designed to boost the savings rate, cut the size of the public sector, and contain growth in wages and pensions. To British eyes, all that looks horribly familiar as a set of factors.

There’s nothing anyone can do about this at the moment: if everyone’s exports depend on the health of everyone else, and everyone’s investment depends on the confidence of everyone else, sooner rather than later everyone is going to go down. Globalism makes this outcome an absolute certainty, and humanity needs to learn that lesson – as usual with our species, the hard way.