With the US reeling from the downgrading of its top-tier credit rating, Europe fearing a sovereign default by Greece and Japan battling seemingly endless deflation, investors would be forgiven for wondering where the investment havens have gone.
The US dollar looks anaemic after reigning supreme as the world's reserve currency since the Second World War, and the prophets of fiscal doom are having a field day.
What is clear is that a seismic power shift is altering the established economic order and that China is at the heart of this change.
It has overtaken Germany as the world's largest exporter. It is increasingly engaging in global policy debates through forums such as theGroup of 20 leading developed and emerging economies. And it looks set to become the biggest economy within two decades. If there was ever a time to predict the yuan would become a reserve currency counterbalancing the dollar, that time is now.
There are many reasons that China would want to make its currency an international and fully convertible currency, including the potential for lower trade settlement costs, cheaper borrowing and increased financial influence commensurate with its growing political and economic stature. This does not mean, however, that the yuan should - or could - achieve this overnight.
HSBC believes the internationalisation of the yuan will occur in three accretive stages: starting as a trade currency; then becoming an investment currency; and finally becoming a reserve currency favoured for its liquidity and stability.
There is little doubt that we are already well into the first phase of that development since a pilot programme in 2009 permitted the use of yuan to settle trade conducted by some mainland Chinese regions with Hong Kong, Macau and the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean).
In fact, we now expect China will settle more than half its business with emerging markets in yuan by 2013-15, representing the equivalent of US$2 trillion (Dh7.34tn) of transactions and propelling the currency into the top three for global trade. Increasing offshore use of the yuan, led by Hong Kong and Macau but with notable growth in Singapore, supports the argument that we are also well into stage two.
The offshore market for yuan did not exist a year ago, yet it now turns over an estimated $2 billion a day - more than estimates for the local currency markets of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Hong Kong's Dim Sum Bond market has enjoyed a similar trajectory and China's finance ministry sold 20bn yuan (Dh11.5bn) of multi-tenor bonds in August that will help to establish benchmark yield curves.
Nor are the equity markets missing out. A share sale in April by Hui Xian, a Chinese property real estate investment trust, marked the launch of an offshore yuan initial public offering market.
While these first steps are encouraging, we also believe reforms are needed to create the right environment for the yuan to evolve further.
Examples would include the liberalisation of transactions within China's capital account and a more accommodative policy for cross-border trade and investment.
When stage three will be reached is hard to gauge, given the moving parts involved, and full realisation will probably take several decades. China will have to pass several challenging milestones on the way, such as finding the willingness to allow foreign countries to hold and sell meaningful amounts of domestic yuan bonds without limits.
Some investors are now amassing yuan-denominated assets in expectation of continued appreciation, while others are hoping for a "big bang" when it is completely de-linked from the dollar to float freely.
HSBC forecasts the yuan will appreciate by an average of 3 to 5 per cent per annum over the next few years, but we also think that a sudden exchange rate leap is highly unlikely, given that the currency is no longer significantly undervalued.
As we emerge from the worst global downturn since the Great Depression and watch closely for signs of a second crisis, it is easy to allow immediate preoccupations to obscure the bigger picture of an eastward shift in economic leadership. There is little incentive for China to rush a policy step as important as convertibility though, especially when so much is at stake for the world's newest superpower.
Tim Reid is the head of commercial banking at HSBC UAE