Knock-on effects

This is not good:

Emerging market banking systems by contrast often need dollar financing not to support their portfolios of US assets but to support their domestic dollar lending.

And it is now clear that a broad range of emerging economies do need access to the international banking system to continue the kind of breakneck growth that they have experienced recently — and have been caught up in the recent “deleveraging” of the global financial system. The FT’s Garnham again:

Analysts said emerging market currencies were being hit as foreign investors pulled money out of developing regions, driven by liquidity pressures from the credit crisis. “There seems little now that the authorities can do to reverse the process of deleveraging that is taking place with financial institutions all contracting their balance sheets at the same time,” said Derek Halpenny, at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Hungary is scrambling for euros.

Ukraine’s government is scrambling for dollars and euros – both to back its currency and to cover the maturing foreign currency borrowing of its banks.

Pakistan’s government needs dollars.

Korean banks are scrambling for dollars.

As are Russian banks. And Kazakh banks. And Emirati banks.

In many of the oil exporters, the government was building up foreign currency assets (reserves, sovereign wealth funds) while the private sector (including many firms with close ties to the government) were big borrowers from the international banking system. In the Emirates there is an added complication: Abu Dhabi was the emirate building up its external assets, while Dubai was the emirate doing the most borrowing.

But across the emerging world, external bank loans have dried up – creating a scramble for foreign currency liquidity.

If America sneezes and the world catches a cold, what happens when America comes down with a dangerous case of the 'flu?

Another emerging market collapse seems to be underway (the first was the Asian economic crisis in the mid-late 1990s). My goodness, everything seems to be built on houses of cards.