Joseph Kahn
`From the standpoint of the United States economy, Russia does not matter.” That was the line coming from US stock market optimists until late last week.
Of all US exports, the reasoning went, less than 1% were to Russia. The Russian economy is no larger than that of the Netherlands. Few people invest their money there and those who do know they face high risks. Investors ignored that logic and panicked anyway.
Russia’s financial and political crisis prompted the largest one-day sell-off of stocks so far this year.
This week was different in another way, however. It marked the first time in years that the three most popular market indices – the Dow Jones industrial average, the Standard & Poor’s 500 and the Nasdaq Compmopsite – showed losses.
Until now, the declines in the indices, unpleasant though they were, had still left investors ahead of the game.
No longer. Investors playing with the house’s money all year are now faced with the prospect of giving up some of their own. If the current correction in stock prices turns into a full-scale bear market, meaning a retreat of more than 15% in the Dow, historians will almost certainly see Russia as the trigger.
The reason is globalisation: the ugly version. The good version held that capitalism was spreading through places where socialism once reigned, tapping new markets and billions of new consumers.
The ugly version goes like this: currency crises can zip from one economy to the next, spreading deflation and leaving recessions in their wake. No one, not the US or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has the power, or perhaps the will, to do much about it.
South Korea has more economic heft. Thailand and Malaysia have more foreign investment. But Russia was a vital experiment in capitalism that, until very recently, was thought to be too important, politically and militarily, to fail.
“Any one of these countries in isolation is not big potatoes in the world economy,” said Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, “but they tell a story about the downside of globalisation.”
When he served in the Commerce Department during the first Bill Clinton administration, Garten was a leading proponent of the US’s global push. Today, he sees the dark side of the trend. “Nobody ever said that globalisation was just a great thing, that it only means economic progress for everyone,” he said.
Russia’s fall makes it clear that capitalism – floating currencies, open borders and free markets – cannot exist without institutions to support it, Garten said.
The US has a Federal Reserve Board to act as a backstop in a bank crisis. The securities and exchange commission serves as a cop for the stock market. Bank deposits are federally insured. Global capitalism has no such bulwarks.
“This is one reason we had a global depression in the 1930s,” Garten said.
“No one took responsibility. We have been fooling ourselves that the IMF would act as a lender of last resort. They have not. They failed in Asia and now in Russia.”
Russia’s decline also shows the power of global price trends. Some see Russia as having aggravated an already troubling downward spiral of prices, or deflation, that is sweeping the world through ever-cheaper manufactured goods.
Many countries in that region now have full-scale deflation in consumer prices, a phenomenon not seen on such a scale since the Depression.
With the devaluation of the rouble, prices of Russian exports like oil and metals, which were already sagging, are likely to slump further.
Falling prices on a broad scale can be insidious because companies earn steadily less for the products they make and because consumers tend to wait before they buy.
But while most economists recognise the evil of deflation, little is being done to stop the spread, said Chen Zhao, a managing editor of Bank Credit Analyst, a research and publishing concern in Montreal.
In fact, real interest rates, which take inflation into account, are at record highs in many countries, as governments and central banks try to defend their currencies .
Shortly after Russia devalued the ruble, Canada and Mexico raised rates to defend their currencies.
High real rates slow economic growth and put fresh downward pressure on prices.
Chen suggests the US Federal Reserve should lower interest rates to reduce the relative appeal of the dollar.
But he sees few signs that the Reserve is prepared to do so unless domestic economic fundamentals take a turn for the worse.
“The US does not comprehend the risk,” he said.
So far, Russia’s problems have had only a marginal effect on earnings of UScompanies.
Several high-risk hedge funds took serious hits and others may follow.
Steel companies, paper producers and others dependent on commodity prices are also made vulnerable by Russian deflation.
But the indirect cost, including the toll on investor psychology, is immeasurably large. Investors have already begun to treat “global” as a bad word.
Until recently, many of the largest companies in the Standard & Poor 500 stock index advertised their world ties. Over the past decade, the foreign share of sales of S&P 500 companies have risen from 25% to 34%. Of Exxon’s total sales, 88% are foreign, according to IBES International; Coca-Cola sells two- thirds of its soft drinks abroad, Motorola 60%.
James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer and a long-time bear, said the poor short-term outlook for the global economy left Wall Street bulls with little ground to stand on.
“The idea that the US market alone can justify stock prices that were once predicated on world expansion is an exercise in wishful thinking.”
Additional reporting by Gretchen Morgenson