Are investors preparing to flee emerging markets?

If emerging countries have been the only fully functional engine of the world economy since the credit crisis, then the rising chorus of concern about the outlook for financial markets there must arouse alarm.

Anxiety about the US slowdown and pumped-up world inflation has prompted many to quietly cross fingers that these economies - which generated almost three quarters of world growth over the past two years - will again save the day.

But with China in the vanguard of the emerging world and now the world's second largest economy, it's not hard to see why fears of inflation and the policy agility to control it, as well as nagging doubts about data transparency, are a worry for all.

Text: Mark Dolan, Reuters

Image: An investor reacts as she looks at the stock price monitor at a private securities company on Thursday, June 9, 2011.

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