In my last article, I discussed the causes and consequences of Tulips Mania, Amsterdam Baking Crisis, British Credit Crisis, and The Great Depression. In this article, we are going to review another four crises. Again, knowing what really happened in the past is important for us to make quick reaction to future crises. So, here we go.
1973 Oil Crisis
Cause
In 1973, the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting countries (OAPEC) led by Saudi Arabia, proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo was targeted at nations that had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The initial nations targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United State, though the embargo also later extended to Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa. Nevertheless, the embargo lasted only until January 1974, though the price of oil remained high afterwards.
Consequences (in America)
By the end of the embargo in March 1974, the price of oil had risen nearly 300%, from US$3 per barrel ($19/m3) to nearly $12 per barrel ($75/m3) globally. US prices were significantly higher since The United States was using more oil than it produced and relying on greater amounts (nearly 30 percent) of imported crude. The embargo caused an oil crisis that severely damaged car-dependent businesses. McDonald’s, Holiday Inn, and Disney, along with other publicly traded companies that investors believed would be hurt by gas shortages, got caught in the sharpest Dow Jones plunge in more than a decade. Also, this crisis severely destabilized the foundations of modern U.S. society, and ultimately challenged the so-called “American way of life”.
This probably reminds you what happened last year. When Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022, in response to sanctions and price caps on its energy exports, Russia reduced supplies of gas to Europe and threatened to cut oil production. The global price of energy shot up, which is one of the reasons leading to a severe cost-of-living crisis in the UK.
Asian Financial Crisis (1997-1998)
The crisis began in Thailand in July 1997 before spreading to several other countries with a ripple effect, raising fears of a worldwide economic meltdown. However, the recovery in 1998–1999 was rapid, and worries of a meltdown quickly subsided. South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand were the countries most affected by the crisis. Hong Kong China, Laos, Malaysia, and the Philippine were also hurt by the slump. Brunei, mainland China, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan China, and Vietnam were less affected.
*This part involves a lot of macroeconomic theories. If you are not familiar with them, you might find this part a little bit confusing. But don’t worry. I will explain the macroeconomic principles thoroughly in my next post in which I will also discuss one of my commonly used investment strategies – currency trading. You can go back to this crisis after reading my next post.
Causes
One of the major causes is that Thailand's economy developed into an economic bubble fuelled by hot money. Hot money signifies currency that quickly and regularly moves between financial markets.The same type of situation happened in Malaysia and Indonesia. The economies of Southeast Asia in particular maintained high interest rates attractive to foreign investors looking for a high rate of return. As a result, the region's economies received a large inflow of money (hot money) and experienced a dramatic increase in asset prices. The problem of hot money is it can lead to rapid changes in exchange rates, high inflation, and financial instability.
The second reason is, in the mid-1990s, Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea had large private current account deficits, and the maintenance of fixed exchange rates encouraged external borrowing and led to excessive exposure to foreign exchange risk in both the financial and corporate sectors.
Another reason is as the U.S. economy recovered from a recession in the early 1990s, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank under began to raise U.S. interest rates to head off inflation. This made the United States a more attractive investment destination relative to Southeast Asia, which had been attracting hot money flows through high short-term interest rates, and raised the value of the U.S. dollar. This caused significant capital outflows from those Asian countries and devalued their currencies.
Consequences
Thailand
Because Thailand lacked the foreign reserves to support the USD–Baht currency peg, and the Thai government was eventually forced to float the Baht, in July 1997, allowing the value of the Baht to be set by the currency market. This caused a chain reaction of events, eventually culminating into a region-wide crisis.
Thailand's booming economy came to a halt amid massive layoffs in finance, real estate, and construction that resulted in huge numbers of workers returning to their villages in the countryside and 600,000 foreign workers being sent back to their home countries. The baht devalued swiftly and lost more than half of its value. The baht reached its lowest point of 56 units to the U.S. dollar in January 1998. The Thai stock market dropped 75%. Finance One, the largest Thai finance company until then, collapsed.
We can see 1 USD can buy 25 TBH in 1997, but 53 TBH a year later. That means there was a huge decrease in TBH value compared to USD.
South Korea
In the wake of the Asian market downturn, Moody's lowered the credit rating of South Korea from A1 to A3, in November 1997, and downgraded again to B2 on 11 December. That contributed to a further decline in South Korean shares since stock markets were already bearish in November. The Seoul Stock Exchange fell by 4% in November 1997. On 8 November, it plunged by 7%, its biggest one-day drop to that date. And on 24 November, stocks fell a further 7.2% on fears that the IMF would demand tough reforms.
Normally, bond yield curve has upward shape. However, during crisis, the short-term yields are higher than long-term yields, because investors are pessimistic about the near future and then require higher return on bonds. Also, because the South Korea’s credit was decreasing, investor required higher yield to compensate the higher credit risk.
China
Unlike investments of many of the Southeast Asian nations, almost all of China's foreign investment took the form of factories on the ground rather than securities, which insulated the country from rapid capital flight. While China was unaffected by the crisis compared to Southeast Asia and South Korea, GDP growth slowed sharply in 1998 and 1999, calling attention to structural problems within its economy. In particular, the Asian financial crisis convinced the of the Chinese government need to resolve the issues of its enormous financial weaknesses, such as having too many non-performing loans. within its banking system, and relying heavily on trade with the United States
Global Financial Crisis (2007 – 2008)
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 was an epic financial and economic collapse that cost many ordinary people their jobs, their life savings, their homes, or all three.
Causes
This crisis developed gradually. The popularity of high-risk financial products and the wrong monetary and financial decisions made by related agencies are the reasons behind this.
The seeds of the financial crisis were planted when Federal Reserve lowered the federal fund rate from 6.5% in May 2000 to 1% in June 2003 to boost the economy after going through the dot-com bubble, a series of corporate accounting scandals, and the 911 terrorist attack. The result was an upward spiral in home prices as borrowers took advantage of the low mortgage rates. Even subprime borrowers, those with poor or no credit history, were able to realize the dream of buying a home.
The banks then sold those loans on to Wall Street banks, which packaged them into what were billed as low-risk financial instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Soon a big secondary market for distributing subprime loans developed.
Then the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2004 relaxed the net capital requirements for five investment banks—Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Morgan Stanley. That freed them to leverage their initial investments by up to 30 times or even 40 times.
In a word, those popular subprime loans embedded huge credit and leverage risks.
Eventually, interest rates started to rise and homeownership reached a saturation point. The Fed started raising rates in June 2004, and two years later the Federal funds rate had reached 5.25%, where it remained until August 2007. In early 2006, home prices started to fall.
Consequences
The direct result of decreasing home prices is that those subprime borrowers defaulted on their mortgage. Because their homes were worth less than they paid for them. They couldn't sell their houses without owing money to their lenders. If they had adjustable-rate mortgages, their costs were going up as their homes' values were going down. Therefore, they chose to default and lose their houses instead of paying the debt.
Since those subprime loans were built on those low credit debt, as 2007 got underway, subprime lenders were able to get their money back and filed for bankruptcy. During February and March, more than 25 subprime lenders went under. In April, New Century Financial, which specialized in sub-prime lending, filed for bankruptcy and laid off half of its workforce.
In March 2008, the U.S. economy was in a full-blown recession and, as financial institutions' liquidity struggles continued, stock markets around the world were tumbling the most since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In September 2008, the collapse of the venerable Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers in September marked the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
COVID 19 Pandemic (2019 – 2023)
Causes
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified in an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. After failing to contain it, the virus spread to other areas of Asia and later worldwide.
Consequences
Apart from massive deaths, the pandemic has triggered severe social and economic disruption around the world, including the largest global recession since the Great Depression. Widespread supply shortages, including food shortages, were caused by supply chain disruptions and panic buying. Reduced human activity led to an unprecedented decrease in pollution. Also, the pandemic has raised issues of racial and geographic discrimination.
During 2020, the world's collective gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 3.4 percent. To put this number in perspective, global GDP reached 84.54 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020 – meaning that a 3.4 percent drop in economic growth results in over two trillion U.S. dollars of lost economic output.
After reading into these major crises, we can jump some conclusions to help us do our investments in the future:
Most of financial crises caused by high-risk financial products with high leverage and low credit. (Next time when you heard something popular, don’t just follow it blindly. Please check the leverage ratio and credit risk behind it.)
Most of financial crises only lasted for 1-2 years but the impact can last 5-10 years. (We can use the cycle length to help us decide when to buy and when to exit.)
Most of financial crises have ripple effects. They started from one country or city and then became global problems. (If you were aware of this, when the Covid-19 happened in China in 2019, you probably would have pulled out your investment in other countries to control the losses .)
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