Industry dismisses prospect of 1994 meltdown

US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's speech on Wednesday outlined the central bank’s intentions to end quantitative easing by the end of 2014, and yesterday Asian financial markets were in turmoil, with Jakarta's index down 3.7%, Manila down 2.9% and Tokyo's Nikkei 225 down 1.7%. But investors, economists and analysts are confident a 1994-style meltdown is not in the cards. Analysts have been brushing off their history of how US interest-rate rises in 1994 sparked a series o…