With the global recession beginning to bite, the least ‘financialised’ economies will be those that thrive in the post-crunch world
The financial crisis spells the drastic decline of the complex money-making instruments that have flourished in the boom years. Few of the hedge funds, the private equity funds, derivatives issuers or derivatives insurers that grew so rapidly from the early 1990s can hope to make a healthy recovery. Not by 2010, nor by 2015, for that matter. Many of the firms will simply disappear.
The private equity industry - when a firm buys out public companies, takes them away from shareholders' expectation of immediate reward and manages them privately on a long-term basis - will suffer the least. That isn't to say that the sector, which is scattered from Texas to Sweden, isn't shrinking: many of the firms are now suffering because they grew too quickly and paid too much for the companies they bought, simply because they had to invest their clients' funds.
Hedge funds, concentrated in New York and London, will be much worse off. These unregulated businesses were enormously profitable, but only as long as the market kept rising. Two years ago, the industry had holdings of well over $1 trillion, but the recent chaos has proved disastrous. The value of these unregulated funds is now 35-40 per cent lower than it was in October 2007. Some have already closed, many more will follow.
London, disproportionately dominated by its financial centre, will suffer the most
Derivatives, the instruments that allowed Nick Leeson to bankrupt Barings, started in Roman times when traders first promised to deliver commodities for a fixed price at a fixed date in the future in exchange for a premium. But they lately ballooned into far more complex financial instruments, far removed from simple risk-sharing, that were themselves swapped, with astronomic total nominal values in the trillions even when the actual cash that finally moved was in the millions. Most of the business is in New York and London, and it will shrink very severely. Only a fraction will survive, because there will always be a demand for risk-sharing: airlines, for example, will still want to buy fuel at predictable prices.
It isn't just complicated financial industries that will bear the brunt of the recession. Here are my predictions for how the global downturn will affect the world's major economies:
EuropeOf the major cities, London, disproportionately dominated by its financial centre, will suffer the most. All the related service industries - such as law firms, expensive restaurants and British Airways, which is so dependent on business and first-class financial traffic - will suffer. As revenues drop, so too will the demand for commercial real estate - expect empty offices across the city. The top end of the residential market is also falling sharply, as the rich bankers who bought Mayfair mansions in the good times are now flying home.
Being by far the most 'financialised' of the large economies - much more so than the US, let alone France, Germany, Italy or Japan - London's crisis cannot be confined within the M25. The whole of the UK will be affected. The 'strong pound' policies that favoured the financial sector have seriously damaged British-based export industries with the result that much of Britain's managerial talent has been absorbed by the City during its boom. Despite relatively low labour costs and Europe's most fluid job market, this has seriously eroded the competitiveness of British industry.
Germany, with its unrivalled export industries, will prosper
Although Gordon Brown was the hero of the hour when he injected public money into the banks, London's downfall as a financial centre will diminish British influence in the EU. Germany, much less financialised, and with unrivalled export industries, will prosper. France will remain more or less where it is, and chaotic Italy may improve its low standing. On the other hand, its peculiar dependence on luxury exports - think Prada, Armani, Ferrari - will mean that the cyclical decline of Italy's real economy will be especially severe.
To a lesser extent, other highly financialised economies, such as the Netherlands and the flight-capital micro-states of Luxembourg and Monaco, will also suffer. Switzerland, however, won't fare too badly. Most Swiss banks have remained focused on conservative, and very expensive, asset management, rather than the sophisticated activities that are now in such trouble.
AmericaThe fall of the financial super-structure will significantly depress the economy in and around New York City. Like London, the shockwaves afflicting service industries will last for several years. But the nationwide impact won't be as bad as in the UK, because the US financial super-structure is much smaller relative to the rest of the economy. The traditional financial structure of commercial banks and debt and equity trading will soon recover, probably by 2010 - although stock values will not for several years.
As for US influence in world politics, the death of Lehman Bros and Smith Barney, and the humbling of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, has undoubtedly reduced America's prestige and economic leverage.
Nevertheless, in some respects, the crisis has reaffirmed US leadership. For example, the other Europeans only agreed on the unprecedented British solution of injecting state funds directly into the banks when the Bush administration also accepted it. The Europeans could have offered their solution to the US on a 'take it or leave it' basis, but instead many countries, including the Germans, refused the British solution until it was fully endorsed by the US.
AsiaRealistically, China is the only country that might be able to increase its standing in the wake of American decline. It has $1.3 trillion worth of foreign currency reserves, and could happily invest even more in raw-material extraction and infrastructure projects in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere, at a time when the West's willingness to finance and carry out large engineering works is bound to decline.
But with commodity prices falling and a lengthening list of expensive foreign projects that are bound to lose money, China has no economic incentive to keep going down this path. In reality, the 'grab strategy' they pursued to get hold of raw materials was always an economic error; the Swiss have no oil wells but all the oil they want. China has certainly gained in political influence, but, increasingly viewed as a 'neo-colonial' exporter of finished goods, it has started to arouse more and more resistance.
Japanese companies could easily afford to buy IBM, Google and Microsoft
In theory, this is the moment when Japan - as well as China, and also Taiwan, Singapore and Korea to some extent - could convert the US treasury bonds and funds they hold in dollars into the ownership of depreciated property and devalued corporations in the US, Britain and Europe.
At its current value of $3.3bn, even a lesser Japanese pension fund (let alone Toyota) could buy out General Motors, and not even the sum total of General Electric, IBM, Google and Microsoft would overstrain Japanese resources. In theory, these Asian nations could acquire all major European companies, and with them the influence of ownership. Yet such purchases are most unlikely, not only because of investor caution, but also because high-profile acquisitions would be bound to come up against stiff nationalist resistance.
Brazil, Russia and the Opec nationsBrazil, which exports everything from airliners to ferrous metals, soya beans, beef, sugar, orange juice, and coffee, is being hit on all sides, but not very severely. It will suffer a cyclical downturn - as its stock market, which has lost half its value since June, has anticipated - but nothing worse. A strong recovery is certain.
The Russian predicament is much worse. Russia depends on a much shorter list of raw material exports. Its greatest asset is oil. At around $70 a barrel, oil is twice as expensive as it was in 2000, but only half what it was last year. The price is nowhere near the $250 that Gazprom's Alexei Miller predicted a few months ago. That is why the Moscow stock exchange has lost 60 per cent of its capitalisation in two months.
As for the oil exporters, Iran and Venezuela will suffer the strongest impact because so much of their oil revenues has been dissipated in foolish ventures. Nigeria and Saudi Arabia will both struggle, while the Dubai real-estate bubble is bursting. The Persian Gulf stock markets have all collapsed but nobody there will go hungry or start attacking the government. The same cannot be said of Venezuela and Iran, where high inflation is already harshly penalising the poor. 
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