The future of capitalism is here, and it’s not what any of us expected. With breathtaking speed, in the autumn of 2008 the credit markets ceased functioning normally, governments around the world began nationalizing financial systems and considering bailouts of other troubled industries, and major independent US investment banks disappeared or became bank holding companies. Meanwhile, currency values, as well as oil and other commodity prices, lurched wildly, while housing prices in Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere continued to slide.
As consumers batten down the hatches and the global economy slows, senior executives confront a more profoundly uncertain business environment than most of them have ever faced. Uncertainty surrounds not only the downturn’s depth and duration — though these are decidedly big unknowns — but also the very future of a global economic order until recently characterized by free-flowing capital and trade and by ever-deepening economic ties. A few months ago, the only challenges to this global system seemed to be external ones like climate change, terrorism, and war. Now, every day brings news that makes all of us wonder if the system itself will survive.
The task of business leaders must be to overcome the paralysis that dooms any organization and to begin shaping the future. One starting point is to take stock of what they do know about their industries and the surrounding economic environment; such an understanding will probably suggest needed changes in strategy. Even then, enormous uncertainty will remain, particularly about how governments will behave and how the global real economy and financial system will interact. All these factors, taken together, will determine whether we face just a few declining quarters, a severe global recession, or something in between.
Uncertainty of this magnitude will leave some leaders lost in the fog. To avoid impulsive, uncoordinated, and ultimately ineffective responses, companies must evaluate an unusually broad set of macroeconomic outcomes and strategic responses and then act to make themselves more flexible, aware, and resilient.
Strengthening these organizational muscles will allow companies not only to survive but also to seize the extraordinary opportunities that arise during periods of vast uncertainty. It was during the recessionary 1870s that Rockefeller and Carnegie began grabbing dominant positions in the emerging oil and steel industries by taking advantage of new refining and steel production technologies and of the weakness of competitors. A century later, also in a difficult economy, Warren Buffett converted a struggling textile company called Berkshire Hathaway into a source of funds for far-flung investments.
What we know
The financial electricity that drives our global economy is not working well. Turning it back on isn’t just a matter of flicking a switch, as central banks and governments have tried to do by providing liquidity, guaranteeing debt, and injecting capital into banks. We must repair the grid itself significantly, and this will require coordinated global action.
By the grid, we mean the global capital market, which evolved more than 35 years after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods accord, in the 1970s. No one designed the global capital market, but it has been a boon to humanity, stimulating globalization and growth by enabling the free international flow of capital and trade. The financial crisis of 2008 severely damaged this useful system. Through greed, neglect, or ignorance, the participants abused it until they broke some of its basic mechanisms.
The implications are far reaching. Most obviously, congestion in the global capital market is exacerbating the US domestic credit crisis. That crisis has spread globally, hitting Europe especially hard. Banks until recently have been scrambling for deposits to replace sources of funding such as direct-issue commercial paper, medium-term notes, and asset-backed paper. The search for deposits is required to finance existing loans, and borrowers will need significantly more of them because all but the strongest have, like the banks, lost access to the securities markets. The US government, in particular, has aggressively tried to address this problem through huge liquidity programs, such as the purchase of mortgage- and other asset-backed securities. But it remains to be seen how effective those efforts will be in mitigating the credit crunch.
The global capital market crisis worsens this credit crunch by sending into reverse the dynamic of cross-border investment and trade flows. A dollar of capital must finance every dollar of trade, so the global capital market has stimulated the international exchange of goods and services. It has facilitated cross-border investments — in intellectual property, talent, brands, and networks — that help economies and companies grow and profit, and it has enabled the companies that make such investments to repatriate their profits. In short, global integration and growth will revive only if the global capital market does. Yet it has sustained a body blow that will have repercussions for years, even if international leaders make the necessary long-term adjustments.
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