Not even Asia’s largest jewelry show could transcend the global economic gloomReports from the September Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair were almost uniformly downbeat, with most feeling even the vaunted Asian market has been impacted by world economic uncertainty.The show ran Sept. 19–23 at AsiaWorld-Expo and Sept. 21–23 at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre, drawing 3,454 exhibitors from 46 countries. Even with the addition of 130,000 square meters of floor space, as well as 200 new exhibitors (making it the largest edition in the fair’s history), the buying atmosphere, according to attendees, was remarkably gloomy.“Sentiment was very bad,” says Mithun Sacheti, CEO of Caratlane, a business-to-business trading platform. “By the third day, most people were willing to write it off. Anyone who did 60 percent of last year’s business was a happy person.”Sac