Most Emerging Markets Should Avoid Full-Blown Crisis in 2015

对于新兴市场的债务投资者来说，2015年的到来让他们对1997年至1998年的危机记忆犹新。现在，和那时一样，由于美联储结束量化宽松政策，全球流动性扩张的长周期出现枯竭迹象，而油价暴跌则颠覆了资产价值计算。去年12月，发展中国家各类资产大幅抛售，摩根士丹利资本国际新兴市场货币指数（MSCI Emerging markets Currency Index）创下10年新低，预示着持有数万亿美元硬通货债务的国家和公司将面临更多麻烦。

A few weeks into the new year, though, analysts are preparing for less than the worst. “We’re going to see a year or two of considerable stress, but stress is not crisis,” says Rashique Rahman, head ofemerging-marketsfixed income for Invesco, an $800 billion, Atlanta-based fund manager. Compared with the late 1990s, when sovereign defaults rippled from Thailand to Russia, national treasuries are on a much sounder footing, with more-disciplined budgets and higher reserves. Most developing countries have shed currency pegs for free floats so the value of their money can decline gradually in line with market demand and possibly restore competitiveness.

在今年受到违约威胁的少数几个国家中，Venezuelaposes the biggest potential headache, with $66 billion in foreign borrowing, including its national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela. The country “will likely default in October of this year without a rebound in oil prices,” says Neil Shearing, London-based chief emerging-markets economist at independent research group Capital Economics.

但投资者表示，委内瑞拉几乎完全依赖石油，加上总统马杜罗（nicolas Maduro）推行的民粹主义政策失手，这使得委内瑞拉成为一个特例，对更广泛的市场构成了微弱的蔓延风险。战乱Ukraine中情局的《世界概况》显示，如果没有西方支持者的大笔注资，该公司今年也将耗尽现金，欠外国债权人260亿美元的债务太少，无法证明是翻天覆地的。阿根廷在2002年卷入了一场有关违约的法律斗争，长期以来，它一直不受主流债券投资者的关注。

Where 2015 looks more menacing than 1998 is in corporate debt, whose volumes have ballooned eightfold since 2009, to $1.7 trillion, data provider Lipper reports. Among the top borrowers are state-controlled energy companies like Petróleo Brasileiro and Russia’s Gazprom and Rosneft. Their ability to repay is being squeezed by collapsing oil and gas prices and market isolation — Petrobras because of a corruption scandal that has delayed earnings reports, the Russian flagships due to Ukraine-related sanctions.

投资者’ concerns about these quasi-sovereigns spill over to the key BRIC nations that implicitly guarantee their bonds. “I am quite worried about Brazil, with Petrobras having very limited access to international markets,” says Daniel Tenengauzer, New York–based head of emerging-markets research at Royal Bank of Canada. “After years of very loose fiscal policies, they don’t have any policy cushion for increasing liquidity.”

担忧俄罗斯明显,一个stunning reversal for a country that used to inspire confidence, with sovereign debt totaling just 12 percent of GDP. The average price of Russian sovereign bonds has dropped by 16 percent since oil began its swoon last July, says Peter Lannigan, head of emerging-markets strategy at CRT Capital Group in Stamford, Connecticut. The price of credit default swaps to insure Russian paper, a standard measure of risk perception, had jumped from about 200 to 577 basis points above nominal yields as of mid-January. That compared with 202 basis points for Brazilian bonds or 2,987 for Argentina’s, according to Deutsche Bank.

分析人士估计，俄罗斯仍有时间幸运地获得石油价格或在乌克兰实现和平，但时间不多。Invesco的Rahman说：“如果油价跌破每桶40美元，西方继续实施当前的制裁，俄罗斯可能在一到两年内进入物质紧张状态。”。（1月16日，布伦特原油收盘价略低于50美元。）

Many emerging nations should experience less distress as fuel prices crash. Tighter credit from the Fed, which has ended QE and is predicted to raise interest rates this year, may be offset by the European Central Bank, which unveiled its own €1.1 trillion ($1.25 trillion) QE plan on January 22, and record money-printing from the Bank of Japan, Lannigan says. Potential gainers include Turkey, whose free-borrowing ways earned it a place among Morgan Stanley’s Fragile Five 16 months ago, and the Philippines, which has run current-account surpluses for a decade while fueling Asia’s fastest economic growth after China. “We’ve been through a period of shock and awe when people were selling the winners with the losers,” Lannigan notes. “Now the market is starting to differentiate to a degree.”