The Doom of Emerging Markets Is Good for Us

For a couple of years now, one of my very smartest sources, Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, has been saying that the emerging market story was over. Coming from someone who makes their money trading those markets, that’s quite a statement. But the last few days of market turmoil and today’s tanking of Russian stocks makes me think once again how right he is. Even before the crisis in the Ukraine, the Russian economy grew at only 1.5 percent last year, and it will be lucky to grow this year at even one percent, despite oil prices being over $100 a barrel. (Some 70 percent of Russia’s export revenues come from oil and gas.) That says a lot about how broken this particular petro state is.