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document.write(''); document.write(''); Briefing function toggle(embed){ if(document.getElementById(embed).style.display == 'none'){ document.getElementById(embed).style.display = 'block'; }else{ document.getElementById(embed).style.display = 'none'; } }The repercussions of Dubai
DishdashedDec 3rd 2009From The Economist print edition
The first of three articles on Dubai’s debt crisis looks at the international reaction. Markets seem to have got over the shock, but there are still disturbing lessons AFP“IT CAME FROM THE DESERT” was an early computer game in which townsfolk were subject to a surprise attack by an army of giant ants. The announcement of a debt standstill on November 25th by Dubai World, a conglomerate based in the desert emirate, was almost as effective in catching investors unaware.
The problems of Dubai were already well known—witness reports of empty buildings, falling property prices and suspended construction projects. But markets previously seem to have assumed that Dubai’s debts would always be covered by Abu Dhabi, its neighbour and the richest of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Stockmarkets duly wobbled, with the FTSE 100 index in London falling by 3% on the day after the debt standstill was announced. But the reaction may have been exaggerated by the timing of the announcement, on the eve of a four-day religious holiday, and a lack of liquidity in markets. Wall Street was closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. And events in Dubai may simply have given traders an excuse to square their books ahead of the year-end, something many were already planning given the robust stockmarket rally since March.
document.write('');“Our view is that events in Dubai don’t mark the start of a new round of problems,” says John Higgins of Capital Economics, a consultancy. “This is a legacy of past financial excess.” Dubai’s problems could be seen as a failed exercise in commercial-property speculation rather than revealing anything particularly new about the global economy.
Traders point out that, unlike Lehman Brothers or AIG, Dubai World was not an int
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The repercussions of Dubai
Dec 3rd 2009From The Economist print edition
“IT CAME FROM THE DESERT” was an early computer game in which townsfolk were subject to a surprise attack by an army of giant ants. The announcement of a debt standstill on November 25th by Dubai World, a conglomerate based in the desert emirate, was almost as effective in catching investors unaware.
The problems of Dubai were already well known—witness reports of empty buildings, falling property prices and suspended construction projects. But markets previously seem to have assumed that Dubai’s debts would always be covered by Abu Dhabi, its neighbour and the richest of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Stockmarkets duly wobbled, with the FTSE 100 index in London falling by 3% on the day after the debt standstill was announced. But the reaction may have been exaggerated by the timing of the announcement, on the eve of a four-day religious holiday, and a lack of liquidity in markets. Wall Street was closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. And events in Dubai may simply have given traders an excuse to square their books ahead of the year-end, something many were already planning given the robust stockmarket rally since March.
“Our view is that events in Dubai don’t mark the start of a new round of problems,” says John Higgins of Capital Economics, a consultancy. “This is a legacy of past financial excess.” Dubai’s problems could be seen as a failed exercise in commercial-property speculation rather than revealing anything particularly new about the global economy.
Traders point out that, unlike Lehman Brothers or AIG, Dubai World was not an intermediary at the heart of the financial system, with links to thousands of counterparties. The knock-on effects of default or debt rescheduling should thus be fairly limited. According to Royal Bank of Scotland, Dubai makes up less than 0.1% of the global economy and the UAE just 0.4% of outstanding global cross-border lending.
By December 1st stockmarkets were rallying again on signs that the Chinese economy was still going strong and on hopes of a global recovery in 2010. In further signs that investors had recovered their appetite for risk, the dollar was falling (it has moved in the opposite direction to share prices for much of the past year) and gold achieved yet another peak in nominal terms. Michael Hartnett, a strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, argues that the medium-term effect of the Dubai crisis may be bullish for the markets, since it will persuade policymakers to abandon any thoughts of “exit strategies” and to keep monetary policy loose.
Near-zero interest rates in America, Europe and Japan have helped sustain the rally in risky assets this year, as investors have been forced to seek higher returns elsewhere. Central banks in many countries have indicated that rates will be held low for an “extended period”, in the words of the Federal Reserve. (Others are tightening, however: Australia, which has strong links to the Chinese economy, raised interest rates for the third time in as many months on December 1st.)
Nevertheless, the news from Dubai may hold some more sobering lessons, too. It has caused investors to reflect whether the next round of the crisis might involve sovereign debt, given the huge rise in fiscal deficits. “A simple rule is that if you want to know where the next crisis will be, then look at where the leverage is being created today,” says Martin Barnes of Bank Credit Analyst, a research firm. “The answer is in the government.”
Although government debt is often described as “risk-free”, history is littered with sovereign defaults or with countries achieving partial default via inflation and currency depreciation. The development of credit-default swaps now gives investors the chance to speculate on, or insure against, a country’s failure to repay its debt. The Dubai announcement caused the cost of this insurance to rise sharply for the emirate itself, though it has since fallen back a bit (see chart).
Outside the Middle East the market that suffered most was Greece, which combines a high debt-to-GDP ratio, a deteriorating budget deficit and an historic inability to tackle its fiscal problems. Most commentators think that the risk of a Greek default is many years away. But in some ways Greece is in a similar situation to Dubai, in that it is a member of an economic confederation and that investors therefore hope it might be bailed out by a richer neighbour—in Greece’s case, Germany (see article).
Another market to come under the spotlight was Britain. Morgan Stanley postulated that a hung parliament next year, after a general election due by June, might cause a fiscal crisis with the pound weakening further and both short rates and gilt yields rising sharply.
If Dubai’s debt crisis carries another general lesson, it may be that the rally in markets and the tentative recovery in the global economy have not been strong enough to bolster the positions of the most indebted borrowers. In some cases, low interest rates may have eased the pressure on debtors; in others, the banks may have shown forbearance to avoid further write-offs. But the lesson of past busts is that bad-debt problems can linger long after the worst of the economic crisis has passed.
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