Financial Times - Winners and Losers:

Winners and losers: Who have been the main winners and losers in the crisis and will this continue?

The following economists’ answers appear in no particular order.

Dr Tim Leunig, London School of Economics

Recessions tend to accelerate trends that already exist. Corus has closed its plant, and that is the sort of thing that happens in a recession. We will see further job losses in manufacturing, and a continued shift towards services. That will harm areas that are manufacturing intensive.

Patrick Minford, Cardiff BusinessSchool

“Winning” can be seen in terms of fiscal hangover: those with the least include Australia but there are not many. The biggest losers are the US and the UK in these terms, plus obviously small countries such as Iceland, Ireland, and east European economies.

George Magnus, UBS

The main winners have been Australia, and Asian and Latin economies with clean balance sheets. Some financial entities have made out like bandits thanks to government and central bank programmes. The main losers have been small- and medium-size companies, other financial companies, homeowners, and the middle class. The government was a winner in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, but has since squandered its kudos. Next year’s winners and losers will doubtless change, but it would help to have greater transparency on government financial policies, and strategies to restructure the economy.

Paul Mortimer-Lee, BNP Paribas

There have been few winners. The big losers are the banks and their shareholders and the taxpayers and their governments. Those lucky enough to lock into a mortgage tracking a few basis points above the base rate have been the big winners, at the expense of savers who have seen interest rate income plunge.

Peter Dixon, Commerzbank

Winner: The Asian economies, which have escaped the worst of the banking sector problems. The events of 2008-09 may yet be seen as a pivotal moment when the Asian catch-up with the US and Europe received a major boost. This is an inexorable process which will continue.

Loser: The Anglo-Saxon model, in which markets are paramount, has lost a lot of adherents – particularly within Europe, where the continental business model has made significant gains at the expense at this model’s expense. This may be one of those political shifts which last for some time but such cyclical swings are by no means permanent.

Loser: Banks will be subject to much greater regulation in future and will clearly not be able to generate the super-normal profits of recent years. Banks will be subject to this straitjacket for many years to come.

Loser: The economics profession does not come out of the crisis well. In the popular view, economists failed to foresee the crash and are thus seen to have failed. Moreover, many of the intellectual underpinnings of the discipline have demonstrated shortcomings (eg rational expectations and neo-Keynesian analysis, which allows a limited role for money and credit). The good news is that just as the experience of the 1930s sparked an intellectual revolution in economics, so we have the opportunity to examine many ideas afresh

Chris Saunders, adviser to Vince Cable

Ultimately the major loser is the taxpayer who is going to face increased rates of taxation and lower public spending for the foreseeable future as the public finances are repaired.

John Muellbauer, Oxford University

n the main, the bankers are the winners; taxpayers are the losers. Less skilled and public sector employees will continue to be losers for the next 5 years. The scale of international banking reform has yet to be seen, but it seems likely that bankers and asset managers will continue to do well.

Giles Wilkes, Centreforum

There have been a surprisingly high number of winners in this crisis. In terms of households, anyone with a secure nominal income has had a much better year than 2008. Owners of wealth have been the major beneficiaries of QE as an insurance policy: predictions of a further 30% house price fall, which were conventional wisdom a year ago, have been utterly confounded, and this reversal has effectively added 700 billion pounds to the future wealth of the already well off. They may not feel it, but the government has bailed them out as much as anyone.

In more loose terms, I think some elements of the financial sector have come out well – the accountants, the hedge funds (whose model has been strongly validated in comparison with banks). If banking and bankers remains under pressure in 2010, I expect non-traditional forms of finance to continue to grow. This will be a good thing – as David Miles observes, we need smaller banking.

The major loser going forward, for good or ill, is the public sector, which has been relying on unstable “mono-crop” revenues, to quote Martin Wolf’s recent column. Crisis is an opportunity, and we can hope that longed-for productivity improvements finally arrive, once the option of extra cash is definitively ruled out. But it will be bloody, and as in Greece and Ireland there ought to be real kick-back from the unions. This may well panic the bond markets for a day or two...

...but (sticking my neck out) I do not see a debt crisis, yet, being a major feature of 2010. The long duration of most of the UK’s debts mean that a funding crisis a la 1976 is not really possible. Debt interest is manageable, and there are recourses for the Treasury like higher VAT that can satisfy the bond market in a pinch. Plus further QE to help us out?

David B Smith, University of Derby

The main winners have been tax and spend politicians who have used the crisis as justification for a totally feckless spending spree to buy votes and the financial regulators whose incompetence was a major source of the crisis, but who have emerged with enlarged bureaucratic empires and enhanced regulatory powers. The other main winners have been the securities houses that have survived, which are now making monopoly profits. These should be broken up on anti-monopoly grounds, especially the large US houses.

The main losers will be ordinary citizens, who will end up much poorer as a result of the slow growth generated by high taxes and excessive regulation, and the future generations who will pick up the bill for the fiscal “Ponzi” schemes now being operated in Britain and the US. Savers have also been treated roughly. Pity the poor person who has to take out an annuity at the present artificially low bond yields generated by QE, for example! Germany has operated more sensible fiscal policies than the “Anglo-Saxons” and will end up more highly regarded as a result. The English economic sickness is now back with a vengeance.

Keith Wade, Schroders

Emerging markets, particularly China, have been the winners. Mainly because their banking systems have been less affected by the credit crunch. More generally, this will continue as long as the US relies on China’s savings to fund itself. The losers are the UK and the US given the dependence on financial services and government spending. However, the US corporate sector is rapidly restructuring and will not be a long term loser from the crisis.

John Philpott, CIPD

My main interest is in the labour market. The main losers have been young people (because recession has impacted on recruitment to a greater extent than usual because wage and hours flexibility has reduced the number of redundancies compared with previous recessions), men (because manufacturing has borne the brunt of the global slump in demand), blue collar workers (ditto manufacturing and because they find it more difficult to switch into the part-time service sector jobs at present most abundant), lower to median paid private sector workers, and businesses, who have experienced pay cuts and loss of profits. Taxpayers in general have also lost out because of the need to finance the bank bailouts and the fiscal stimulus. And savers who are getting little return on deposits. Winners have been better paid private sector workers who have kept their jobs, benefited from low inflation and low interest rates. These include financial sector workers who are benefiting from an artificial stimulus to their bonus pools due to taxpayer support (though some of this will now be taxed). Public sector workers have also done relatively well albeit their own recession is on the way, especially from 2011 onward. Shareholders have also done well in 2009 making up for some of the losses earlier in the recession.

Martin Weale, Director, NIESR

The main losers have probably been current and future taxpayers while the winners have been those whose livelihoods and incomes have been directly protected by the way in which banking bail-outs have been managed. I cannot see this changing significantly.

Carrick James, Legal & General Investment Management

The crisis spread from US and UK consumers to small businesses and exporters who could no longer get trade finance. Given interest rates are at record lows in many emerging economies, we think their consumers will remain the winners but US and UK taxpayers/public sector beneficiaries will be the new losers given the private debt problem has been largely passed onto the government.

Oliver Marc Hartwich, The Centre for Independent Studies

The big winners of this crisis are those countries that managed to avoid the downturn and instead kept growing, most notably China, India and Australia. The big losers of the crisis are Britain and Europe: struggling under enormous debt burdens, with overblown welfare states and increasingly inward looking leaders, their economies were the most severely affected by the global financial crisis.

Samuel Brittan, Financial Times

Winners will be those with secure jobs or pensions. Losers: those losing jobs or fearing that they will.

Dhaval Joshi, RAB Capital

Politically, Barack Obama was a clear winner, as the crisis undoubtedly got him elected. But economically, there were very few outright winners – when asset prices crash and the economy slumps, very few people end up richer! A big loser was the faith in unfettered, laissez-faire, free-market economics championed by the US and UK. Hence, an economic and financial system with more intervention and regulation now seems to be on the ascendancy, and this has shifted both the economic and political balance of power away from the US and UK, and towards Europe and China.

Pierre Cailleteau, Moody’s

There are no absolute winners in such a global crisis, with a destruction of wealth, a contraction in outputs and reduced potential growth: this is a negative sum game. There are “relative” winners, mostly in Asia, as reflected in the changes in global governance. The main losers are the taxpayers everywhere.

John Hawksworth, PricewaterhouseCoopers

China has been a key winner and I would expect this to continue, albeit possibly with some bumps along the road as they deal with potential asset market overheating. The US, UK and other relatively highly indebted countries seem likely to see the greatest longer term drag on growth from the crises.

Richard Jeffrey, Cazenove Capital

There few outright winners, although Brazil and China have survived relatively unscathed, to date. Relative winners in Europe must include France. Within the domestic economy borrowers have, ironically, been winners. In other words, policy has been aimed at protecting the imprudent (including government) from the consequences of their actions. The prudent will continue to pay the cost.

Ruth Lea, Economic Adviser, Arbuthnot Banking Group

Winners: (i) rescued banks and investment bankers (there is some overlap here) – will probably continue. (ii) The public sector still expands and its employees still benefit from better employment packages than their private sector counterparts – will probably not continue.

Losers: just about everyone else, especially savers and the unemployed – will probably continue.

Howard Archer, IHS Global Insight

The winners from this crisis are the countries that did not take on too much debt. This includes most of Asia and some of the key countries in Latin America, especially Brazil.

The losers have included those economies that were suffering from major imbalances going into the crisis, such as Ireland, Spain and Greece. And, really, the UK. Some countries that were heavily reliant on global trade suffered particularly hard during the downturn, notably Germany – but they should be among the most to benefit from the pick up in global growth and trade.

Andrew Goodwin, Oxford Economics

It’s difficult to identify too many winners and very easy to come up with a long list of losers. The UK taxpayer will eventually be shown to be one of the biggest losers – the fiscal mismanagement of the past decade will take many years of austerity to fix.

Colin Ellis, Daiwa Securities

The crisis looks like it will accelerate the closing of the gap between developed and developing economies, and the winners/losers label could be applied there. Ultimately, taxpayers have to pay down government debt and public sector workers will feel the squeeze, and are arguably big losers too. But for me, the mark of good policy over the longer term is how quickly policymakers can get unemployment falling, and how low they can get it (given inflation and budget deficit under control, etc). The risk is that the people who pay the ultimate price are those who lose their jobs and fail to find a new one - and these people typically tend to be less well educated and poorer. Indeed, it was striking that in the Bank of England’s latest NMG survey that the richest respondents had seen the smallest falls in their “discretionary” income over the past year. From a social policy perspective, this is clearly worrying, and from an economic one too, as it represents lower national income and output.

Picking winners is really tricky. Indeed, that could be one reflection of the breath of the crisis – the effects are so widespread across the economy that it’s hard to find people who genuinely benefit. No doubt that, in years to come, we will look back and see successful start-ups during the recession. But it’s hard to predict those now.

Stewart Robertson, Aviva Investors

Tricky. Aside from the developed/emerging split, everyone has suffered really. Winners are only relative ones!

Ian McCafferty, CBI

In any crisis of this magnitude, which triggered the deepest global recession in a generation, there are few clear winners in the short term. Looking further out, the legacy of the banking crisis has probably accelerated the eastward shift in economic power, so emerging Asia, and China in particular, will make relative gains.

Philip Booth, Institute of Economic Affairs

The main winners from the crisis are holders of debt capital in bust financial institutions and the main losers are taxpayers.

Tony Dolphin, Institute for Public Policy Research

The main losers have been those people who have lost their jobs, or been forced to take a cut in pay or conditions to retain them, or have just joined the labour market and find it impossible to get a decent job. In some cases – wealthy bankers – we probably do not need to spare much sympathy, as they should be cushioned by their past earnings. In others – particularly in low value-added manufacturing – the recession has served to accelerate a process that has been underway for many years, ie the transfer of jobs from the UK to cheaper overseas producers, but this does not make life any easier if you live in an area where a major employer has closed leaving unemployment at very high levels. But in some cases businesses have only failed because of the depth of the recession and the squeeze on credit and it is these businesses and their employees who are perhaps the biggest losers in the crisis, at least within the UK.

Are there any winners? Only those who have been able to make use of cheap money to turn a quick profit – hedge funds for example.

Phil Thornton, Clarity Economics

The losers in the UK may mainly been drawn from the home owning and consuming sector – ordinary folk in other words – and those businesses that depend on them. Households have been hit by unemployment and falling house prices and stock markets (although falls in mortgage rates have helped). Consumer-facing businesses were hit, as were those dependent on credit lines. Regions outside London and the south-east were hit worst. Winners (relatively speaking) included the financial sector thanks to government bailouts. 2010 may see more of the same.

Geoffrey Dicks, Novus Capital Markets

Apart from the investment bankers (who still do not get the scoop), the main losers are the young unemployed. In 1997, under Gordon Brown’s New Deal, there was to be no unemployment option for young people – they were either in a job, education or training, or doing some form of community service. Twelve years later, near-1m young unemployed is a disgraceful policy failure.

Douglas McWilliams, Chief Executive, CEBR

Proportionately, the shift from west to east has been accelerated by the differential impact of the crisis on the different economies. There have been some particular sectors who have done especially well – eg Chinese car dealers and real estate developers. The latter are likely to be squeezed in the coming years when they try to rent out the properties that they have been building. People working for most governments so far (especially in the UK) have had a very easy ride, with no redundancies and considerably faster pay growth than the private sector though this will change in the coming years. Some of the professionals who handle administration proceedings are likely to have done well and will probably continue to do so. In the UK one of the effects of the crisis is to move us from being a strong currency economy to being a weak currency economy and over time this is likely to mean that the traded goods sector, which has been relatively depressed, will do rather better than the parts of the economy that are domestically orientated.

Jonathan Haskel, Imperial College Business School

Winners, banks and above all bankers. Losers, taxpayers. As long as gain is private and losses are social this will continue.

Michael Dicks, Barclays Wealth

The main losers are the so-called advanced economies, especially those which let the biggest asset bubbles build – eg Spain and Ireland. The main winners are those which didn’t – typically emerging markets. What really matters, going ahead, is whether or not policymakers learn from their mistakes. Narrow inflation targeting didn’t work very well. Now it might be better to place rather more weight on asset prices when determining policy – not just when rate-setting but when setting fiscal and structural parameters and regulatory policies.

George Buckley, Deutsche Bank

Winners: opposition parties (especially the Conservatives and Lib Dems)

Losers: taxpayers; bond investors (as yields rise)

Ray Barrell, NIESR

The losers have been the debt prone Britons and to a lesser extent the US. All trading economies have paid a price, but China, India and Brazil have weathered the crisis well.

Andrew Hilton, Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation

I keep thinking that the only “winner” from the crisis is Canada. Oh, and the biggest banks, who have now essentially been socialized, even if not nationalized. Everyone else is a loser.

Martin Gahbauer, Nationwide Building Society

Those with variable rate mortgages have been the big winners of this crisis, assuming they have remained in employment. Debt service costs have never been lower than they are now. The main losers have been those coming out of school and university, as youth unemployment has risen to record highs.

Nick Bosanquet, Reform

Losers: Entrants to the labour market especially the youth unemployed. Male manual workers especially in the UK regions. For example in the West Midlands the male working age employment rate fell by 4.1 per cent to 72.1 per cent in the year to September 2009 while the female rate increased 0.7 per cent. It is likely that more than half the working age male manual workforce in the UK has been affected either by unemployment or by pay reductions.

Winners: Staff in the public sector, particularly in the NHS, where there has been increased pay partly through generous incremental scales under the Agenda for Change agreement as well as an increase in employment. People above retirement age with final salary pensions.

Brian Hilliard, Société Générale

Large companies have won compared to small companies because the former has had good access to credit over the past year. Policymakers have been ineffectual in regenerating lending growth to small companies.

Stephen King, HSBC

So far, debtors have done rather well as have those – very few – investors who were lucky enough to have bought risky assets earlier in the year. Savers, particularly those who rely on income from their bank accounts, have been hit. Whether this is fair is another issue altogether.

Peter Spencer, Ernst & Young Item Club

It’s hard to think of winners, although Vince Cable has certainly had a good crisis. The big surprise is that manufacturing was hit so badly. In principle the crunch and the associated fall in the exchange rate should have hit financial industry and consumer spending and let manufacturing off lightly, but Lehman impacted international trade credit and our exports badly. The expectation is that this will turn around as world trade recovers, but this could just be a pious hope.

Amit Kara, UBS

Winners

The private sector, most notably small and medium sized companies, have suffered most during this recession. That is likely to change in our view. To start with the fiscal consolidation will ensure that the MPC holds the policy rate low for long and at the same time cost savings from cuts in public sector pay and employment will exert downward pressure on overall wage growth. Private sector companies that survive will not only benefit from increased market share but also from low borrowing costs and subdued wage growth.

Also, UK export oriented companies will benefit from the weaker currency and as it happens UK exporters tend to take that benefit on margins rather than on volume growth.

Losers

Sectors that depend on public sector investment spending will lose out.

Mixed

Among households, those with mortgages will win from lower than otherwise borrowing costs but there is every chance the government raises the VAT rate towards 20 per cent.

Regionally, areas that depend more on the private sector such as the south-east of England will do well while others, such as Scotland and Wales, where public sector employment is high, will underperform. Regions that are exposed to the manufacturing sector will however, benefit.

Andrew Scott, London Business School

2009 saw everyone suffer and everyone respond in broadly the same way. 2010 will start to see differences across countries and certainly in policies as some nations follow exit strategies much earlier. Losers are simple – anyone with high leverage, who borrowed short term and invested long and was exposed to real estate or the financial sector. If the world economy is improving then the winners will become clearer. Anyone with assets or access to credit should find a number of attractive acquisitions possible in 2010. China will probably be looking at a number of significant equity investments to help its corporate sector in the next stage of Chinese economic growth

John Van Reenen, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

The main losers in a recession, as ever, are the most vulnerable groups. Young people especially the less skilled have seen huge falls in their employment rates as these are the first people that employers let go/do not hire. The cuts in public expenditure are likely to also hit vulnerable groups as benefits are squeezed. The unemployment problem will improve as the economy grows but we need to maintain strong activation programs. If the unemployed lose contact with the labour market as happened in the early 1980s and early 1990s recessions in Britain and other large European countries high unemployment rates can persist for a very, very long time.

The financial sector as a whole has lost its shine and there is likely to be a global shrinking of the sector in economic importance. More talented young people will hopefully go into engineering real things instead of toxic instruments. This is a good thing for the world, but less good for Britain which has managed to get a disproportionate share of these rent-generating activities.

Economics as a whole has taken an intellectual hit. I think the general case is often overstated as much of what we have learned in microeconomics has remained intact. But there must be some serious rethinking in mainstream macroeconomics and finance where the general assumption of frictionless financial markets is a class A liability.

Melissa Kidd, Lombard Street Research

Notable “winners” in this cycle have been domestic demand-driven economies, such as Poland, who have been relatively insulated from the sharp downturn in global trade.

Peter Warburton, Economic Perspectives

Current winners: Resource rich nations with small populations and healthy public finances, such as Canada and Norway; open economies whose currencies have been free to depreciate during the crisis, preventing even greater damage to the domestic economy, such as Korea; niche jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

Future winners: Resource rich nations with small populations and healthy public finances, such as Canada and Norway; consensual societies that have pulled together during the crisis rather than fractured along political or other lines, such as Germany, Switzerland and Sweden; niche jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

Losers, present and future: Western economies with proportionately large financial sectors, eg UK, Ireland; countries with high structural unemployment and uncompetitive workforces operating within inflexible currency structures eg Spain, Portugal, Greece; wannabe nations that have borrowed extensively in foreign currencies, eg Baltics and Ukraine.

Gerard Lyons, Standard Chartered

The world economy is in the early stages of a shift in the balance of power from the west to the east. The winners in this New World Order will be those countries that have the financial resources such as China and Qatar, or natural resources such as Brazil, large parts of Africa and the Middle East, or that have the ability to remain competitive by adapting and changing.

The need to achieve a balanced global economy points to the US and the UK becoming relatively poorer in coming years, as they have to spend less and save more, whilst the winners are the big savings regions such as the Middle East and large parts of east Asia.

One longer-term issue is how quickly the US and UK can bounce back. I think they will and thus they have the potential to join the third group of winners, namely those countries that have the ability to adapt and change.

Robert Barrie, Credit Suisse

In terms of its make-up, the recession was remarkably similar to previous episodes. The same highly cyclical parts of the economy were most affected. Winners are harder to find than losers, but anyone with an old-style tracker mortgage will have seen their payments fall to levels they couldn’t have expected and anyone who invested in risky assets from the spring time onwards will have made decent returns.

Sushil Wadhwani, Wadhwani Asset Management

While there will always be some who do well from a crisis, the associated recession has meant that the overwhelming impact has been negative. In a relative sense, even though UK growth might surprise the consensus on the upside over the next few months, I expect this country to be a relative underperformer in the coming years. The UK has a comparative advantage in the provision of financial and associated services in an international context. However, the financial sector is likely to remain under regulatory pressure.

Henrik Braconnier, OECD

i. Parts of the financial sector have remained in good shape and given high margins in eg lending to household the sector is likely make substantial profits, unless regulators intervene more heavy handedly. The sector as a whole is likely to shrink as a consequence of the crisis though.

ii. Public sector employees have so far weather the recession well, but are likely to be hit disproportionately in terms of wages and job opportunities as consolidation in earnest starts.

iii. Welfare systems, essential public services and pensions may get squeezed. Fiscal consolidation needs to be done with one eye on poverty indicators.

iv. Exporting firms will be able to cash in on the weak pound once global recovery strengthens.

Diane Coyle, Enlightenment Economics

The winners will be those investors with enough cash to invest in assets at bargain-basement prices.

The losers are the people losing their jobs and homes. The level of savings held by the typical family is shockingly low, certainly not enough to tide people over a long spell of unemployment. And we know too that unemployment is one of the most significant factors in unhappiness.

Lucrezia Reichlin, London Business School

This recession had huge redistribution costs which were partly attenuated by fiscal policies. The question is who will pay for the public debt that went with it. Probably the young. Also, high unemployment implies permanent dislocation of people whose skills will be inadequate to compete in the recovery.

Trevor Williams, Lloyds TSB

the main winners have been the emerging markets and the G20. More generally, it has been those with little debt. The losers have been those with high debt.

Not sure about residential prices, our housing economists at Halifax have a better sense of that than me.

Gary Styles, Hometrack

Winners: Overseas cash investors in property and equities, city traders, short term credit providers to household sector ( eg money lenders offering loans at 2000 per cent apr on small amounts)

Losers: Taxpayers, retail banking staff, pensioners (and those relying on interest income), estate agents and those dependent on house move activity, students looking for first jobs.

This is likely to continue for some time and will be further increased when the fiscal deficit is finally addressed by higher taxation and severe cuts in public spending (not experienced since the 1930’s). What does this say about the priorities of the country when the majority of the winners are also the least deserving – so much for the welfare economics principle of polluter pays.

Carl Emmerson, Institute for Fiscal Studies

Main groups of obvious losers are perhaps: (1) those who have lost their jobs, in particular those who are now experiencing a long period out of paid work and (2) those approaching retirement who have seen sharp falls in the value of their equity investments and houses coupled with increases in annuity rates, but with relatively little time to adjust before their planned retirement date.

Hard to think of winners. But, at least in relative terms, pensioners seem to have done okay so far. Those who were already retired who onto nominal annuities (the majority of those who had DC pension plans) will have benefited from the much lower than expected inflation. In April the basic state pension will be increased by 2.5 per cent, relative to a September 2009 RPI of -1.4 per cent (although it is also true that many pensioners won’t have mortgages and therefore might face higher inflation rates). Also noticeable that both main UK parties are claiming that they would protect the NHS from the looming squeeze on public service spending which, if true, would be likely to benefit pensioners more than most.

Ian Plenderleith, Former Bank of England head of markets

We are all losers!

David Blanchflower, former MPC member

Winners have, in the end, been the bankers themselves. They took the risks and the benefits on the high side and the electorate covered the low-side risk. The biggest losers have been the young. Through no fault of their own they entered the labour market when we were in the depths of a recession. The large size of the youth cohort has made matters worse.

Andrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics Foundation

It’s hard to see who has won in the crisis. Ironically, at the moment, the losers seem to have won. By that I mean that the reputations of finance and banking are in tatters, and yet the public has bailed them out and they have escaped meaningful and necessary re-regulation. The other loser, more generally, is the myth of market and private sector efficiency.

In his book The Great Crash (1929), John Kenneth Galbraith noted that “The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.” If there is a winner, it is the unequivocal conclusion that the market, and finance in particular, depends on the public sphere and should be its slave, not its master, and also that a well-functioning, open market utterly depends on strong regulation.

Julian LeGrand, London School of Economics

In previous recession, poverty and relative inequality fell. This was because top and average incomes fell, while low incomes were maintained by price-indexed state benefits. I predict the same for this one.

Lena Komileva, Tullet Prebon

Managers of funds, including the state, have been the big winners. The big losers have been the shareholders and this category includes the taxpayer.

Jonathan Loynes, Capital Economics

The main losers of the crisis have been those connected to the housing market and exporters. The former will continue to struggle for a while at least. By contrast, exporters should do much better over the next year or two as the lower pound boosts competitiveness and global activity strengthens somewhat. Those in the public sector have been relatively well insulated so far but will suffer from the coming fiscal consolidation.

Bridget Rosewell, Volterra

The losers have so far been the manufacturing sector – Birmingham has the fastest increase and highest level of unemployment. This was partly driven by the high oil price and overheating. Moreover this loss has been overshadowed by the banking crisis which had to be dealt with but whose overhang is still causing problems. Relatively few bankers have been as hard hit. There are as yet no obvious winners. Crisis is often where new ideas emerge but they are still too embryonic to know which will be the winners.

Ben Broadbent, Goldman Sachs

No one has won, everyone’s lost. The emerging world has come through the downturn far better than Europe, the US or Japan. But that’s a relative statement.

Brian Coulton, Fitch Ratings

The crisis has hit the advanced economies hardest and within this those that had previously been most reliant on strong credit growth. While the large benchmark AAA’s have shown the balance sheet capacity to deal with the crisis and support their economies, the smaller advanced economies with less financing flexibility and weaker initial fiscal positions have been arguably the biggest victims (eg Ireland, Greece [though largely self inflicted], Iceland). Emerging markets as a whole have had a relatively “good crisis” but it is hard to see tem as outright “winners” and of course those emerging markets with large imbalances, exposed to the credit cycle in Eastern Europe have suffered very severe adjustments.

Michael Saunders, Citi

There have been almost no winners from the crisis other than insolvency experts. There are many losers, including taxpayers hit by tax hikes, people who have lost their job, users of public services that face cuts. Reputational losses have hit central bankers, bank heads, finance ministers, bank regulators, and the belief in open markets and economic stability.

Peter Westaway, Nomura

Once the effects of financial crisis have worked through, ironically important winners will be the export sector where the rebalancing of the economy away from a reliance on domestic demand has been facilitated by the necessarily lower real exchange rate.

Ad of course the losers have been the financial services sector. The banking sector will inevitably be less profitable and capital and liquidity regulations bite. But let’s not exaggerate, the UK financial sector will still be enormously important..

Charles Goodhart, former MPC member

Winners: Journalists, some economists, pessimists

Losers: Bankers, politicians, optimists

Philip Shaw, Investec

Winners – those seeking more regulation. The regulators themselves are beginning to shrug off the earlier criticism and are coming out on top. Economics, at least as a subject (if not economists!), which is now an “in” topic.

Losers – the financial industry. Small businesses that are unable to borrow.

Banks now face a higher costs of funding through higher capital and liquidity requirements, so this is part of a longer-term trend. One hopes that disintermediation will widen the pool of additional financing available to SMEs and perhaps households, although how this happens without a revival of the securitisation market, I’m not sure.

Danny Gabay, Fathom Consulting

Beyond the odd hedge fund manager, it is hard to think of any outright winners. The countries that built up the most debt and hence their on vulnerability, in the boom are likely to be main losers. The last line of defence is the sovereign, and it may now have been breached.

On a more micro-level, the main winners have been those in receipt additional government expenditure. Examples include: those UK residents trading in old cars for a cash subsidy towards the cost of a new one, together with those overseas car workers who have made the new ones; those people in danger of repossession who have a received a contribution towards their interest payments; staff and account holders at high street banks that would otherwise have failed. The main loser will be the UK tax payer.

James Knightley, ING

Winners – emerging markets in general

Losers – the Anglo Saxon economies in general and UK in particular, Bankers, regulators, ratings agencies

Sir John Gieve, Chairman of Vocalink and former deputy governor of the Bank of England

In economic terms Australia , Brazil and India have fared well and should continue to do so. In industrial terms, the winners are oil/gas and many commodities – I expect them to get stronger still in the upturn. (While China has continued to grow, it has been the result of an extraordinary burst of government spending and forced lending and it faces a difficult transition ahead.) The big losers have been Iceland, Ireland, much of eastern Europe, and the unemployed.

In political terms the emergence of the G20 as the lead grouping has marked a step change in the authority particularly of China, which I doubt will be reversed.

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