英国作业代写|俄罗斯金融危机的影响

英国作业代写|俄罗斯金融危机的影响
Effects of the financial crisis in Russia

全球金融危机是一个多层的危机最为广阔的表达、重叠和相互鼓励。“信息爆炸”极大地提高了人们思考问题的比例，与他们的日常生活无关。惯性系统不再匹配新的信息和独立思维的人的比例，因此乘法错误。直到2008七月，俄罗斯经济全面开花。它以每年接近8%的速度增长，石油价格达到每桶140美元，该国正在运行一个大的财政和经常账户盈余；它有一个6000亿美元的外汇储备，以及它的股票市场，债券市场和货币价值很强。

Global financial crisis is the most capacious expression of a number of multi-layered crises, overlapping and encouraging each other. "Information explosion" dramatically increases the proportion of people thinking about issues not related to their daily lives. Inertia systems no longer match the new information and the proportion of independently-minded people, and therefore multiply errors. Until July of 2008, Russia's economy was in full bloom. It was growing at an annual rate close to 8%; oil prices were peaking at $140 a barrel; the country was running a large fiscal and current account surplus; it had a war chest of $600 billion-plus of foreign reserves; and its stock market, bond markets and currency values were strong.

Things have changed since then.

Let us take a look at some important macroeconomic data:

The bottom line: November- December- January- February- March (with dates)

Right-side column: the value of ruble.

For a better understanding of what is happening with the ruble, Russian analysts refer to the double-currency basket. The double-currency basket consists of $ 0.55 and EUR 0,45. This indicator of foreign Exchange market was introduced about 4 years ago. The convenience of this basket is that it eliminates the effect of fluctuations of the dollar against the euro on the international market, showing the value of the ruble against the average of two leading world currencies.

What caused these changes?

The international reserves of Bank of Russia, which are not just a symbol, but also the main source of the relative stability of the ruble, continued to shrink. After reaching the maximum (598.1 billion U.S. dollars) on 8 August 2008, the day of the attack of Georgia against South Ossetia, they fell by 213800 billion dollars (or alternatively by 36%) till present days.

The cause for this drastic fall is obvious and has even been stated by many senior leaders of the state as being a lack of control over money given by the Government and the Bank of Russia in order to support the banking system and the real sector. As a result, we have financial thrombus, (an expression used by Medvedev), meaning that the banks, and sometimes companies do not direct government assistance to resolve urgent problems, but instead turn to speculation, especially with regard to the currency.

Speculators bought up (mostly at the expense of funds allocated by the state as a financial aid) mainly international reserves of the Bank of Russia in the foreign exchange market, contributing to their rapid decline. 

However, international reserves provide a stable ruble, and their rapid and steady decline (from which the state was trying to divert public attention in every way, silencing its magnitude and drawing attention to the individual single increases, particularly prior to public statements of senior officials) portends devaluation.

In December 2008 it has already begun the handling rise of public opinion in the spirit that the devaluation, as in 1998, would fuel economy, economic growth and prosperity. But this is just an attempt to save a good face with a bad game.

In 1998, the devaluation increased the competitiveness of Russia (but only after Russia had survived, because it could also die because of the devaluation shock) in conditions of high external demand and in the situation where the external debt of the business was negligible. Now the external demand is compressing more rapidly than domestic: the world is in depression, and Russia should account for it. On the other hand, now the bulk of foreign debt is in the business, and the last is just crushed by the debt's enhancement as a result of the devaluation.

How could the Government avoid it? It is rather simple: by introducing strict control over the state's help to the banking and real sectors. However, such control would inevitably limit the corruption, not just in words but in facts, creating a serious threat to astronomic revenues of the ruling kleptocracy.

The discussion above introduces another question: why did the Government and the Bank of Russia give money to some banks and companies?

A huge outflow of speculative capital (due to lack of liquidity in the U.S.) in the first half of September 2008 was the proximate cause of the fall of the Russian stock market.

The State was not absolutely ready for it. After the unprecedented collapse of quotations on 15 September the Government closed the capital market, but they did not take any extraordinary measure. Panic and crisis increased rapidly, as in May-July 2004, and by the evening of Thursday 18 September, the situation had become critical: banking liquidity had fallen to a critical level, as panic spread in the business population. Depositors were expected to hold up banks on Monday morning (or even on Friday afternoon) - and literally at the last minute, at night, the State awakened and was able to catch falling financial system.

The underlying issue is that the wrong tools were applied (in fact the banking system was saved by the budget!) to the Ministry of Finance money, rather than by the Bank of Russia, which seems to have simply not understood the magnitude of the danger. The panicked nature of decision-making lead to excessive financing, increasing the hazard of corruption and inflation, and instead of supporting single important firms the state supported the stock market as a whole. In essence, the state supported the speculators, instead of the economy, but the main goal of saving the country from a new financial collapse was ultimately reached. Even the largest investment banks of Russia stood up (as the "Three Dialogue"), or were bought (such as "Renaissance Capital").

Kudrin, Russia's Minister of Finance, has now become a symbol of the strategy of displacing the maximum amount of state funds from the national economy. Inflation did not fall (because it was caused by monopolies and corruption), but in the economy there occurred an artificial shortage of money. It is sufficient to point out that from January to August of 2008, the money supply in Russia grew by only 9.5% - the absolute minimum from the time of default. This would render a liquidity crisis inevitable, even without the deterioration of the global environment.

Companies and banks had no access to the necessary liquidity in the country, so they were seeking credit from the West, obtaining in the form of loans their own money paid in taxes, but for a much higher interest rate. The unflawed appearance of the Russian reformers and their reputation did not suggest that there was a huge margin between the interest on which the Russian government gives the taxpayers' money to Western economies, and interest on these loans for the Russian taxpayers settles only in the West. 

Until August 2008, the result of this strategy had been huge losses reaching tens of billions of dollars a year, the increase of the external debt of Russia ( by the 1st of July very close to the volume of international reserves of Bank of Russia -, respectively, 527.1 and 568.3 billion dollars) and ( because of the deteriorating global environment) the growth of the short-term external borrowing, that took place in the second quarter of 2008.

However, in August-September 2008, this model was destroyed by the West. Western money was directed to cover domestic financial "holes", and their return (even very profitable) in the Russian economy was drastically reduced. Russian banks were facing an acute shortage of funds, so they began to take short-term loans, expecting in the worst-case scenario to sell their security packages. However, the flight of Western speculative capital caused the fall of the stock market, so these securities depreciated and robbed the banks of the possibility to pay. The result was a desperate crisis of liquidity.

It is important to note that the liberal reformers, after bringing the financial system of the country to the brink, turned the tragedy into a new luxury business. 

Indeed, the allocation of the equivalent of U.S. $ 50 billion to roll over the debts of highly significant firms was a necessary measure which would prevent bankruptcy from becoming an epidemic. It is reasonable that this assistance is neither free, nor for the "beautiful eyes" of the bankrupt businessmen, but for a controlling stake. 

But there is also another side. As shown above, the bankruptcy was caused not by the mistakes of the businessmen, but primarily by Kudin's flawed policy. It turns out that liberal reformers on one hand deny Russian business its working capital, putting it on the brink of bankruptcy and on the other, take from it all the best, with the money of the same business, paid in taxes. And there is no doubt that the future privatization of these assets will pass them into the hands of the same liberal reformers, thereby creating a new generation of oligarchs. However, increased state intervention is likely to be mixed with market-oriented policies in some areas, as demonstrated by recent tax cuts and measures to support small businesses. At the start of 2009 the corporate tax rate was reduced from 24% to 20%, and the tax rate on small enterprises was cut from 15% to 5%.

Let us take a look at the current account now. The current-account surplus reached a record high of US$98.9bn in 2008, according to estimates from the RCB, up from US$76.2bn in 2007. However, as a percentage of GDP, the surplus remained unchanged from 2007, at around 6%.

The RCB has not yet provided data on the fourth quarter performance, but on the basis of data for January-September, it has been estimated that the current-account surplus declined to just US$8bn in October-December, compared with US$24bn a year previously. The deterioration mainly reflects a 13% year-on-year drop in exports in the final quarter, following growth of more than 50% in the previous quarter, mostly because of falling revenue from exports of oil and oil products, which were down by 21.5% year on year. The negative impact of the worsening export performance on the overall current-account balance was mitigated to some extent by a concurrent sharp slowdown in import growth, as domestic demand eased. Goods imports rose by just 5% year on year in the final quarter, down from 44% growth in the third quarter.

The RCB balance-of-payments estimates also confirm that there was a large net outflow of capital in the fourth quarter of 2008, with the capital- and financial-account deficit estimated at around US$130bn for the quarter, as the ability of banks and corporations to refinance their external debt was sharply restricted, and as domestic players bought foreign currency to hedge against ruble devaluation.

The future estimates tell us that the current-account position will deteriorate in 2009, with falling imports only partly offsetting the impact of plunging exports. Net capital outflows will also continue. According to the RCB, in 2009 US$117.1bn in outstanding payments of foreign debt at the end of September 2008 will fall due to Russian borrowers, with US$28bn due in the first quarter of 2009. Banks will need to repay, or refinance, US$52.1bn in 2009, with the rest due from the non-financial sector.

Because of emergency expenditure increases as well as declining revenue because of tax cuts, sharply lower commodity prices and slowing growth will push the budget into deficit in 2009. The Economist Intelligence Unit forecast a deficit of about 6% of GDP for 2009. This will be financed mostly from the Reserve Fund.

Latest news:

On March 15th, 2009 the representatives of OPEC plan to meet in Vienna. They are going to speak on the issue of further deliveries of oil to world markets. It is expected that this meeting will influence world oil prices. Earlier, representatives of OPEC had repeatedly stressed the need for further reduction of the production of black gold. 

Meanwhile, the Algerian Oil Minister Shakib Khelil predicted that during the forthcoming meeting of OPEC, its members would probably decide to reduce oil production.

"The market expects a reduction in oil production, and we must reduce it, otherwise the price will drop even lower. We will discuss this issue in Vienna, but I think the consensus will be reached to achieve market stability through the reduction of oil production", stated Khelil on Wednesday in Algeria. Compared with September, crude oil production in the cartel had already declined by 4.2 million barrels per day, representing about 5% of global oil production. 

Meanwhile, it became known that in response to prompted requests, OPEC was ready to include Russia in the organization. This was reported on March 11th by Bloomberg News, referring to the Iranian news agency Fars which quoted the Minister of Petroleum of Iran Golamhusseyna Nozari. 

Prior to the meeting of OPEC in Vienna, Nozari repeated his call for greater cooperation between the cartel and the producers outside the organization. According to him, the countries outside of the organization should join the efforts of OPEC.

And Russia, which is the largest producer outside the organization, should not be an exception. "The OPEC has the possibility of including Russia as a party", said the Minister of Petroleum in Iran.

It is impossible to be certain of the future, but upon looking at actual data we may forecast that Russia will be in recession for most of 2009, but the economy is expected to begin to recover towards the end of the year, as a result of some improvement in international oil prices, a significant boost in competitiveness from the real depreciation of the ruble, and the feeding through of government stimulus measures. Growth in 2010 is forecast at 3%. In contrast with many other countries, Russia's return to growth will be unencumbered by the need to deleverage a large volume of household debt, and this should support a rapid recovery of private consumption. Also, the government has stepped in to support lending to the economy, decreased the tax burden and increased state purchases of goods and services.