Hard to imagine with financial markets still buoyant and newspapers full of tales of bonus greed, but there is still the possibility that captialism will end.  At least there is according to prestigious investment consultants Watson Wyatt in their latest study called "Extreme Risks".

The firm listed the demise of the system of private ownership as one of 15 threats to investors and the global economy that probably won't happen but which it reckons are worth worrying about anyway. The idea behind the report is that such things as climate change, the break up of the euro zone and war are always worth being included in an investment risk management process.

As for the future of capitalism:

In our view, the most likely scenario is moving along from one end of a spectrum where market is king (minimum regulation) towards the other end, where we could see more onerous regulations and government intervention in, and control of, the economy. The extreme risk, however, is the demise of the capitalist system and the end of the market as the primary means of resource allocation.

And the impact:

The economy would be likely to run a higher risk of failure and economic growth would be sluggish in the long run due to lower productivity.  Centrally controlled economies tend to be characterised by shortages, which are inherently inflationary. Private investment activities would collapse or even be terminated. The end of capitalism is simply the ultimate extreme risk. The economy is likely to be associated with extreme uncertainty and a large amount of wealth destruction during the transition period.

Watson Wyatt does try to give its free market clients some hope, suggesting that buying gold may be one way to hedge against the propect of capitalism's demise. But it admitted that in such a circumstance investors would probably be more concerned about the return of their investments rather that the return on them.

(Illustration called The Communist Party, from Threadless)

Wall Street would like you to believe that when investment banks take on risk they are largely doing it for the benefit of investors -- maybe even you and me.

Bankers say much of the capital that their firms put at risk each day is to complete trades for big corporations, mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds and university endowments. And contrary to the conventional wisdom, proprietary trading -- bets made for a bank's own behalf -- is really just a small part of their business.

Lately, Wall Street's captains of capitalism have been aggressive in pushing the "we take big risks for our customers, not for ourselves" line of argument.

That's especially so in the wake of the public furor over the outsized trading gains at the big banks like Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase and Barclays and even Citigroup, so soon after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The notion that risk is being taken for customers as opposed to for the firm's own benefit is somehow supposed to make it seem more palatable and somehow less risky.

Still, for many, the image persists that investment banks spend a lot of time and resources gambling on stocks, bonds, commodities or currencies to generate fat profits and big bonuses. And there's good reason for that image: Wall Street firms don't break out the dollars they take in from client trades versus those generated by prop trading.

Yet from the perspective of Wall Street bankers, it's perfectly logical to see much of their risk taking simply as part of trades for their customers.

Here's how:

Let's say a hedge fund calls up an investment bank and asks it to help buy a large block of shares, but it doesn't want to pay much more than a given sum and intends to finance part of the transaction. That may force the investment bank to commit some of its own capital to acquire those shares in a series of separate transactions, so as not to create an undue spike in the stock's price.

To protect itself from losing money, the investment bank may go out and enter into a number of other trades or derivatives transactions -- all intended to reduce, or lay off, its risk of a loss on the customer transaction.

And in all likelihood those follow-on trades will prompt the investment bank to engage in a series of other trades to minimize its exposure to something going awry with those hedges.

At the end of the day, what looks like a simple customer order to buy stock on margin may end up creating a daisy chain of transactions that the customer wasn't even aware were taking place. But in the mind of a Wall Street banker, all these follow-on trades are simply part of the process of completing the customer's order.

Not surprisingly, some of these follow-on transactions can rake in sizeable revenues for a bank's trading desk. That's how an ordinary customer request to buy stock can generate revenues far in excess of whatever fees the initial trade may have produced.

Of course, if things go wrong, an investment bank can just as easily lose money on some of these follow-on transactions, and that's why there's risk involved in the process.

It's hard to see what distinguishes some of these transactions from what an outside observer might label as prop trading -- a group of traders sitting around with a pile of firm capital to do with as they please. But that's not the way that bankers think about customer trades.

Maybe it's all just a case of semantics, and trying to make a distinction between customer trades and prop trading is fruitless. Ultimately, maybe all trading activities by investment banks should just be viewed as risky.

The key to taming the giant banks is to put them in a position where they must turn away customer business because of the potential risk associated with all these follow-on trades.

One way to do that would be to impose hard-and-fast caps on the size of bank balance sheets, as it would deter them from engaging in transactions that add to their assets and liabilities. To avoid any unfair advantage, the caps on bank balance sheets would have to be agreed by regulators and policy makers around the globe.

But a balance sheet cap would be easier to impose and monitor than the increased capital holding requirements Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is proposing for global banks.

And better yet, a balance sheet cap would have the added benefit of fostering more competition between banks by driving some business to smaller institutions.

– Preston Keat is director of research at Eurasia Group, a global political risk consultancy, and author of the forthcoming book “The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investors” (with Ian Bremmer). Any views expressed are his own. For the related story, click here.

There are a number of macro risks that will continue to grab headlines in 2009, including the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, cross-border tensions and state instability in Pakistan, and Iran’s 
ongoing quest to develop advanced nuclear technologies.

These risks are real, and will not be resolved easily or quickly. But there are two other general groups of political risks that could be defining both for investors and policy makers: first, the prospect of a number of interrelated market risks in developed and emerging Europe, and second, the challenges faced by the United States regarding multilateral leadership (particularly in the area of financial regulatory reform).

Political risks have historically mattered much more in emerging markets, but political risk in the developed, industrial democracies is rising more quickly than anyone would have predicted a year ago.

Europe

Political-market risk in emerging Europe is significantly higher now than any time in the past decade. Russia and Ukraine, and even recent star “emerging Europe” performers such as Turkey, Hungary, and Romania face serious vulnerabilities in the coming 
year. In addition, western financial institutions based in countries
 like Germany, Italy and Austria are particularly vulnerable to a credit 
crisis in Eastern Europe, where they have large loan exposures. Russia’s growing anti-westernism, its state intervention in strategic
 economic sectors, and its assertive posture regarding Georgia have been widely discussed, and will remain concerns in
 2009.

This also plays into one of the most problematic country risk 
stories right now: Ukraine. Its steel-centric economy is in free
 fall due to dramatically reduced global demand, many of its companies
 have large foreign debt financing needs that they will struggle to meet, 
 and its domestic politics are gridlocked and bordering on 
dysfunctional.

Add serious ongoing tensions with Russia to the list, and 
the situation looks bad from almost every angle. The year has
 already started badly, with Gazprom cutting gas supplies 
to Ukraine, and the
 standoff highlights the growing animosity between Moscow and Kiev.

The global financial and credit crises, combined with recession in
 Western Europe, have exposed several other countries in emerging Europe 
to serious financial market risks. In Hungary, the IMF and the 
EU needed to step in with a dramatic aid package in order to head off a potential currency and bond market collapse. And in Romania, there are
 growing concerns about a real estate bubble, rapidly declining economic
 growth, and the evaporation of repatriation cash flows from Romanians 
living in Italy and Spain.

Both the Hungary and Romania stories highlight the increasing 
interconnectedness of political and market risk in the EU. The newer
 member states can no longer be considered in relative isolation from the
 core, Western European countries.

The most notable example is the 
exposure of Western banks to credit risk in Eastern Europe. In recent
 years western banks have made substantial home mortgage, consumer, and
 business loans to eastern Europeans that were denominated in western 
currencies. The borrowers were
 exposed to local currency risks that the often did not fully understand
.

Italy, 
 Austria, and Germany had the largest exposures. Now these western
 governments may need to step in to assist with the solution. In fact, if
 the EU and European Central Bank had not intervened in dramatic fashion 
in Hungary, a number of western-European banks and pension funds would
 have been in very serious trouble. The problem is that this may only be 
the beginning of a crisis that could involve dozens of countries in both 
the East and the West.

The U.S. and Multilateralism

In the past several years the dynamics of “multilateralism” have evolved 
fairly dramatically. Two central developments this year:

1.  A number of
 additional players such as India, China, and Brazil are actively
 seeking to play a larger role in multilateral negotiations and 
institutions.

2.  The U.S. is in the process of a presidential 
leadership transition, with an expectation that the new administration
 will address these issues differently than its predecessor.

This new environment presents both challenges and opportunities. A 
larger number of “key” players at the table means that policy 
coordination could be much more difficult - a classic collective action
 problem. At the same time, engaging newer, emerging-market countries may 
make sustainable “breakthrough” outcomes more plausible, as these 
countries will be central to tackling complex issues such as climate 
change and global trade.

Prior to September of 2008, the central challenges of 
multilateral cooperation were in areas such as energy/climate change, 
 trade, and security. Then the global financial and credit crisis offered 
an almost perfect experiment. How would the world’s leading 
countries, along with those who aspired to positions of greater 
leadership (e.g. China, India, Brazil) manage this systemic crisis?

When it comes to a new financial regulatory architecture, the U.S. is 
likely to find support for its agenda in the UK and China, who will
 share the its general aversion to giving meaningful regulatory authority 
to multilateral institutions such as the IMF. As long as these three key
 players can agree on general principles for market regulation, power 
will remain in the hands of national governments rather than any
 multilateral organization.

But this 
is where a key, lurking political risk comes into play - can the U.S.
 actually take the lead in developing a coherent approach to new 
regulation of capital markets?

Congress will probably feel that it needs to act in a dramatic
 fashion and enact new legislation. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve 
will also have serious, and potentially conflicting agendas. So even if
 the multilateral dimension looks manageable, the domestic and
 bureaucratic politics of new regulation present a substantial new risk.