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Dealing with Financial Crisis: the United States v Russia
Stock markets the world over have experienced a rash of losses and all around volatile
activity in recent days. Here we look at two of the most dramatic locations: the United
States and Russia.
The economic systems of both countries are rooted in their geography. The United States
boasts a large number of interconnecting navigable rivers draining massive tracts of
arable land, and a variety of coastal regions blessed with multiple harbors ideal for trade
and city building. A long series of barrier islands on the east coast greatly simplify local
ocean shipping while a series of geographic features on the West Coast -- California’s
Central Valley for example -- encourages development independently.
All that was necessary to make the United States a well-developed country was a few
transport links -- road and rail both -- crossing the Rockies and Appalachians.
Transporting goods around the country is pretty simple, especially for Midwestern
farmers who just need to get to a river. Wealth begits wealth and private enterprise faces
very few barriers to growth. In short economic advancement is a breeze in the United
States, and that has shaped how the economy -- even the financial system -- has
developed. Americans tend to prefer laizzez faire economies with the government for the
most part keeping out of business simply because government is not needed very much.
So Americans debate what to do with their wealth after it is earned -- not how to generate
it in the first place.
In contrast, Russia’s rivers for the most part neither interconnect nor flow to where it is
logical to site cities. Most drain to the Arctic and the largest that does not -- the Volga -drains into the landlocked Caspian Sea. Russia’s useful coastline is also very small, and
where they do have some (the Black and White Sea regions), it is not situated near major
population centers. Because Russia’s growing season is so short, foodstuffs are produced
in surges rather than dribbling through year round, making transport of the produce a
once-a-year nightmare. Doubly so since it is a nightmare that you cannot use the rivers
(or maritime shipping in general) to facilitate -- you are dependent on shipping everything
along whatever road and rail network the government was able to build.
The result is an economic culture that is almost a perfect inverse of the United States.
Whereas economic development in America is child’s play, mass starvation in Russia can
only be avoided with strict, perfect central planning. Transport infrastructure is a
convenient unifying factor in the United States -- by some perspectives almost a luxury -but it is a life-and-death issue in Russia. So while Americans expect their government to
stay out of their business, Russians fully expect the government to play an active role in
anything that involves the economy.
This backdrop does much to explain how events of the past few days have worked out.
In the United States the two big events were the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the
government intervention to salvage American International Group, both of which found
themselves on the financial rocks after overgorging on subprime mortgage assets.
Questionable lending practices created a massive amount of mortgages being granted to
people who in truth could not afford to make payments. But since the conventional
wisdom in investment is -- make that was -- that mortgages are the safest, most reliable
category of securities, many investment houses both bought up such subprime mortgages
in bulk and developed their own lending arms to create more subprime mortgages
directly.
Eventually the housing bubble popped and the combination of a recession in housing and
all these subprime mortgages -- some 20 percent are in delinquency -- going bust forced
an industry-wide write down of assets. For Lehman Brothers and AIG both, the process
of rationalizing their books proved too expensive, threatening their ability to operate. In
the case of Lehman the government attempted to matchmake them to a healthier firm to
allow an orderly transition, but in the end was willing to step aside and simply let the firm
die by its own mistakes.
The AIG situation is a touch more complicated. Here the Federal Reserve granted an $85
billion loan to take control of 80 percent of the group’s stock. Many saw this as a bailout
and heckled the decision, but the reality could not be further from the truth. The Fed’s
conditions were simple: we will grant you this loan so that you do not need to worry
about stockholders’ demands (there will be no dividends) or liquidity ($85 billion should
be plenty to keep AIG’s internal operations running no matter what happens in the wider
market), and in exchange you will sell of the entire company within two years. The Fed
intervened only to ensure that it’s the groups massive insurance policies -- AIG controls a
half-trillion dollars' worth of financial protection that AIG provides Wall Street firms and
the biggest companies of Europe and Asia -- would not be abandoned. The price for its
assistance was the group’s utter liquidation. AIG, in effect, ceased to exist the day the
“bailout” was announced. The Fed action simply keeps the body on life support until all
of the body’s organs can be harvested.
The markets are still roiled -- and it is unclear if Wall Street has fully absorbed that AIG
was not saved, but put down like a horse with a broken leg -- but the point remains that
these interventions are done reluctantly, with only two thoughts in mind. 1) Only
intervening when the stability of the system itself may be in danger and not simply to
save any particular private enterprise. 2) Getting the government out of the business of
business as quickly as possible.
Now contrast this to what is going on in Russia.
Troubles in the Russian markets are not new. Earlier this year the government began
taking a much more interventionist tack in dealing with foreign investors, and in May
foreign money began to flee. Many things contributed to the change, but the biggest
would have to be a growing feeling within the Russian government that rule of law and
property rights -- never very strong in Russia in the first place -- could be interpreted
creatively by officials to serve the government’s tactical needs. The biggest example of
this was the government encouraging the fleecing of the BP half of oil firm
<http://www.stratfor.com/russia_abramovich_shows_himself_door TNK-BP>.
In August Russia invaded Georgia, adding a layer of political risk and making investors
with longer memories think back to the geopolitical hostility and financial volatility of
the Cold War era. The outflow increased. Finally, the Western credit crunch which
claimed Lehman Brothers and AIG has triggered a global flight to quality assets.
Considering the Russian view of property and the Georgia war, Russian assets are no
longer considered a safe bet. Add in the fact that oil prices have dropped by a third in the
past three months, and Russia suddenly looks like the place not to be.
So on Sept. 16 the Russian markets plunged forcing the government to suspend trading in
its final hour. Overnight strategy sessions to prevent a repeat failed, and trading was
suspended in the first hour of trading Sept. 17 for the entire day. It remains suspended
Sept. 18 and the system will be switched back on Sept. 19. The rout is so
uncompromising that Surgutneftegaz, one of Russia’s oil majors, now suffers from a
market capitalization that is only slightly more than the amount of cash it holds in the
bank.
The government held a series of crisis meetings in which it was decided that the
government would directly recapitalize of the three largest state banks -- Sberbank, VTB
and Gazprombank -- to the tune of $44 billion. Additionally, the government will sink
500 billion rubles ($19.6 billion) directly into the stock markets, and indirectly another 60
billion rubles via those same state banks.
Direct intervention in a stock market is generally frowned upon for the inefficiencies it
creates -- investors never know if they will find themselves on the wrong side of
government action -- but announcing that you are going to do it ahead of time allows
speculators time to line up bets against the government action. If the plan goes ahead as
announced the Kremlin will in effect be burning over $20 billion to achieve very little
except perhaps the perception of getting things back on track.
Neither of these are major concerns for the government. Their goal is not to protect the
economic system like it is for the Americans; their goal is to control it as one would
control a domesticated animal. The difference in mindset to the U.S. Federal Reserve
could not be more stark. The Fed, as experienced and competent as it is, doesn’t even
pretend to think that it could manage the entire system by itself -- and it wouldn’t want to
even if it could.
The Russian system, however, is predicated on political control born out of political and
economic necessity. There is no allergenic response to the idea of centralization, in fact,
many in the top ranks see centralization as a good in and of itself. But even the most
laizzez faire among them realize that at times a firm guiding hand is necessary -especially in Russia. The argument is not over whether to intervene, but over how deeply
and for how long.
The Kremlin knows it needs more money in the system, plain and simple. It also knows
that despite its $750 billion in reserve funds, it does not have the managerial skills or
even the cash necessary to manage the entire economy itself. It has to get ahold of more
resources.
As a stopgap measure the Kremlin is in the process of drawing up a short list of critical
firms that cannot be allowed to go under. These firms will be given some sort of access to
government funding. Anyone not on the list is left to fend for themselves. One result is
that the firms that can gain access to financing will gobble up many who cannot -massive consolidation is definitely looming well before the horizon in Russia. Since the
government is far more likely to grant lifelines to government companies, this
consolidation will also a centralization of economic power under the Kremlin.
Simultaneously to creating their short list, the government’s next step will be to address
the funds shortage issue. Their goal is to prevent more money from fleeing -- the trading
suspensions are only the start of that, capital controls and perhaps even limits on the
ruble’s convertibility will follow. After that the government will rustle up additional
resources to augment the government’s reserves. Since the first step will make for
foreign money avoid Russia like a plague, the Kremlin will need to look to another
source.
And it looks as if the Kremlin has already found one: Russia’s oligarchs.
The oligarchs were originally a group of men who robbed the Russian state blind in the
early days of the Soviet collapse. Using everything from fraud to theft to armed seizure
they amassed massive, if somewhat Frankensteined, corporate empires that ruled Russian
economic -- and even political -- life for years. Their membership would change as new
oligarchs would rise (sometimes violently) to replace the old, but they seemed like a
permanent feature of the Russian system until the rise of Vladimir Putin. He laid out new
ground rules to lash their economic power to the Kremlin’s goals, and punished those
who did not obey.
Yet not all of the oligarchs are private citizens anymore. The assets of many of the
oligarchs who fell have since been transferred to the state and placed under the aegis of
Putin’s allies. So now the oligarchs can be split into four neat groups: the nominally
subservient yet still independent, those with government offices, the exiled or imprisoned,
and the dead.
This second group warrants some exposition, as their existence is woven tightly with the
Russian predilection for centralization. It is not that these “state oligarchs” happen to
control major firms for the state, but that these are government ministers who directly
control these firms. They include such august personages as Deputy Prime Minister Igor
Sechin (also president of Rosneft) and First Deputy Prime Minister.Viktor Zubkov
(chairman of Gazprom). Now President Dmitry Medvedev previously held both of
Zubkov’s offices. The point being that Russia’s economic centralization is already deeply
underway.
One of the meetings held the night of Sept. 16-17 was not simply a gathering of
government economic personnel. Putin ordered that the major oligarchs -- all of them -fly to Moscow. The attendance list was so thorough that it even included
<http://www.stratfor.com/russia_abramovich_shows_himself_door Roman
Abramovich>, an oligarch who not only has divested himself of many of his Russian
assets but who is now living in London -- he flew in late that night. The Russian oligarchs
represent the greatest pool of capital -- foreign or otherwise -- in Russia and have a
reputation for putting their own financial interests first. The fact that the markets crashed
in the first hour of opening after this meeting indicates that if there was a plan for the
oligarchs to provide ballast, that plan was not very enthusiastically implemented.
That will not be forgotten.
The oligarchs -- especially the private oligarchs -- have the money. The Kremlin needs
the money. Centralization is the word of the day. Connecting those dots is ultimately
what Stratfor sees as the main event in the Russian economy in the weeks ahead. Never
forget that whereas in the American system the emphasis has been on system
preservation, in the Kremlin it is on power preservation. It appears we are entering the
final stage of struggle between the oligarchs and the state for control over the economy.
http://www.stratfor.com/coming_era_russias_dark_rider
Jewish?
US has antitrust laws specifically to prevent collusion -- it’s the opposite in Russia
Silovarcs (Medvedev: Gazprom v Exxon)