In his latest shareholder letter, Larry Fink, chair of BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), the world's largest fund manager, pronounced the impending end of globalization as a result of Putin's war and the ensuing Western sanctions.
"The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades," Fink writes. "It has left many communities and people feeling isolated and looking inward.
Fink's pronouncements come little more than a month after Putin's supposed "special operation began." Since then, said sanctions have essentially ripped Russia out of the fabric of the global economy.
The country's central bank has $630 billion in currency reserves that it cannot spend. Reportedly, its chief tank manufacturing facility has run out of parts. Meanwhile, several crucial Russian banks can no longer use the Swift messaging service, which allows money to change hands across international lines, deeply hampering the country's ability to raise funds through energy exports.
Said energy exports account for 60% of Russia's economic output. The U.S. has banned the import of all Russian sourced oil and gas, while both the U.K. and the E.U. say they can achieve energy independence from Russia sooner than previously thought.
The UK says this goal can be achieved by year's end, while the E.U. says it can reach it "well before 2030."
With the global order now made uncertain by Putin's actions, companies will turn inward and "re-evaluate their dependencies and re-analyze their manufacturing and assembly footprints - something that Covid had already spurred many to start doing," Fink writes.
The BlackRock chief contends that this process of gradual on-shoring will help the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil, but it will harm economies that have built themselves around the presumption of continued globalization.Meanwhile, he argues that this slow implosion of supply chains that once spanned the globe will only accelerate due to Putin's actions, thus raising the inflationary pressures brought on by the pandemic.
The situation leaves central bankers in a dilemma "whether to live with higher inflation or slow economic activity and employment to lower inflation quickly." However, rising inflation could spur the further adoption of digital currencies, with Fink noting that the Fed is currently looking at the prospect of adopting a digital dollar.
In the near term, countries, now starved of Russian oil and gas, will likely further exploit local sources of fossil fuels, hampering their green transition, Fink writes.
In the long run, however, Putin's war will only accelerate the transition to renewables, with the BlackRock chief noting that "Germany, for example, plans to accelerate its use of renewable energy and reach 100% clean power by 2035, 15 years ahead of its previous pre-war target."
In his letter to shareholders, Howard Marks of Oak Tree adopts a similar stance to Fink's when it comes to the implications of Putin's aggression.
"The recognition of these negative aspects of globalization has now caused the pendulum to swing back to local sourcing," Marks writes. However, Marks differs with Fink in one critical regard, contending that this gradual de-globalization will negatively affect the world's transition to clean energy.
"Rather than the cheapest, easiest and greenest sources, there'll probably be more of a premium put on the safest and surest," Marks contends.