Asian markets this morning ...

Asian markets this morning (barring Shanghai which is up for different reasons), have given a muted response to Washington's humungous bailout package. In fact, the Hang Seng even dipped into the red briefly, and was last trading flat. Among the other regional stock benchmarks, the Kospi was only marginally up, while the Straits Times was down slightly. The Nikkei and the Shanghai Composite are the only two markets up sharply. The latter is continuing last week's rebound after the Chinese government announced a slew of steps to shore up sentiment in the local stock market.