Pretty much every bit of economic data that comes across my desk these days seems to back up the idea that we're very quickly headed for the Asian century. As I've blogged previously, global capital flows are falling off a cliff -- net private capital flows to developing countries, for example, will soon be negative -- a more than $700 billion drop since 2007. While Asian nations haven't been immune to this, they've been much less affected than Latin America or Emerging Europe, for example. Investors are steering what little money they have to Asia -- net portfolio investment into the region is running at a pace not seen in five years. It seems clear that Asia will recover from the recession faster than either the US or Europe, and that it will continue to leave other emerging markets in the dust, too. Korea returned to quarterly growth earlier this year, and there are positive signs in Japan, Malaysia and China, too.

I'm betting that as the region recovers, it will continue to economically align itself with China, rather than the US. America has been a major export market for Asian nations, in many cases the largest. But China is big, too, and it's interesting that the countries that are seeing the biggest fall-off in things like trade are countries like India, that depend more on the US, rather than on China.

I'm leaving for a reporting trip to Japan and China on Sunday -- more to come.

Stress-Free Friday: A stress test wrap-up from the NYT.

On Your Marx...: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez responds to the recession by nationalizing the docks and boats owned by oil-services companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger.

Gold Bugs Beware: All the bears are screaming "Buy gold!" to hedge against inflation, but check this interactive graphic on the history of gold prices first. It is, as the FT says, an "unstable metal," highly susceptible to political events.

Auto Anarchy: Why is there so much drama in the auto business these days? As Der Spiegel reports, Porsche tried and failed to take over Volkswagen, a company 15 times its size. The two will merge instead.

Money TV: The strange, trader-friendly journalism of CNBC: "In February, Power Lunch, the midday show, booked two of the canniest thinkers to emerge in the crisis, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the options trader and Black Swan author, and the economist Nouriel Roubini—only to find the two men stubbornly averse to saying anything that might risk making viewers any money."

The Government's Go-To Guy: Ever wonder how the government is valuing all those hard-to-value toxic, ahem, troubled, er, legacy assets? Answer: BlackRock.