Bringing Up The Bodies in Emerging Markets

‘The order goes to The Tower, “Bring up the bodies.”’

— Bring Up The Bodies, Hilary Mantell (The Forth Estate, Jan 2015)

For many investors the meltdown in emerging market exchange rates is just some temporary contagion from Turkey; it will go away. The reasoning goes that it is a myopic liquidation of perfectly good assets, just because Turkey happens to be classified as an emerging market. Your analyst has long disagreed with that and late last year outlined the consequences for emerging markets from the bankruptcy of Turkey.

Of course the greatest surprise for investors is not that this is a problem for emerging markets but that it is, much more importantly, the beginning of a European crisis. However, it is not just the negative impacts from the broad financial forces outlined in these reports that are depressing emerging market exchange rates. There is something much more important and insidious undermining these exchange rates: the rise of the rule of man and the decline of the rule of law.

Professional investors have become entirely distracted from the structural decline in the rule of law in emerging markets, as they beat themselves up about Brexit and the Trump Presidency. Given the backgrounds of the average investment manager, it is not surprising that their attention should be diverted to these local issues that challenge not just their portfolio values, but also their personal values. Whatever these two political shifts represent, however, they do not represent a decline in the rule of law. If the US does have a President, whether Republican or Democrat, who breaches the law then it is highly likely that they will be held to account by the legal process.

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