The world has been watching and wincing as one economy after another approaches meltdown. First came the Asian economic woes. Then the Russian ruble began its free fall and the country plunged into yet another power struggle. Last week, the long-shaky Latin American region grew even shakier when Columbia devalued its currency.

At first glance, Los Angeles is far removed from these crises. But they have directly affected some Angelenos be they currency traders, freight forwarders or money managers. It spells bad news for some and good news for others, but the bottom line is the same: Life has been anything but normal for these three businessmen.

The Currency Trader

Since the markets shifted into a bear run a couple of weeks ago, Peter Ro has lost sleep and free time. The 33-year-old currency trader at City National Bank has stayed through the nether hours between the New York Stock Exchange’s close and the Tokyo Exchange’s opening to follow the economies’ wild fluctuations. He has come in on Sundays to keep abreast of a deluge of client orders and the international news that drives currency values.

“There is so much information to ingest, and some of the most interesting gyrations occur on off-market hours,” Ro said from the foreign exchange desk at City National’s downtown office. “That’s why I came in on Sunday, to avoid indigestion Monday morning.”

Ro has been a currency trader for five years and said that customer activity has never been this frantic not even in late 1994 and early 1995, when the dollar was hitting record lows. Instead of transactions declining, as would happen if clients were speculating in the market, exchange orders have picked up dramatically over the last couple of weeks. The foreign exchange desk’s 1,500 clients many of them L.A. companies that are doing business overseas are trying not to get clobbered by wildly fluctuating exchange rates.

“Currency traders are living from fractions of percentage points to fractions of percentage points,” Ro said. “Clients are seeing changes in valuation in six hours that they used to see in six months. This means they’re more anxious than ever about their transactions, and we scramble to stay on top of it. There is absolutely no white space on our order board. To call it hectic would be an understatement.”

Customers’ anxiety has escalated beyond the fever pitch that traders experienced last Christmas when the Asian markets started to crash, Ro notes. Customers are calling more often, looking for updates and reassurances on where they stand.

“My high-stress clients are now fully neurotic,” Ro said. “The already neurotic ones are now well, I better not say.”

The anxiety stays with the currency traders even after the work day officially ends. They go home every night still thinking about market issues. And Ro, along with the rest of the financial world, has no guess when the volatility will calm down.

“Over the past month, the Asian contagion has fully spread to Russia, South Africa and Eastern Europe, and we’re not surprised at all by the global economic meltdown given our observations,” Ro said. “We’re not just witnessing a downturn in a business cycle, which has driven previous market crashes. Instead, we’re seeing the implosion of socially rooted economic problems around the world. We have to ride them out further before we can make any predictions about how and when the markets will stabilize.”

In the meantime, Ro sighs when thinking about what faces him in the coming weeks. Orders will continue to pour in, anxious customers will continue to call, and he will likely continue to sacrifice free time to keep up with breaking news.

“I’m feeling overwhelmed, but a trader isn’t doing his job right if he’s not feeling overwhelmed,” Ro said. “Fortunately, the excitement outweighs the headaches in this job.”

The Asset Manager

Emerging market specialist David De Wind, a partner at Hollister Asset Management in Century City, was only a few days away from finalizing a major investment deal in Russia when the country began to fall apart. After almost a year of legwork and five trips to Moscow, De Wind’s deals have been set back as much as six months.

“To tell you the truth, it’s been frustrating,” De Wind said calmly, amid piles of paper in a disheveled office. “All our deals in Russia have definitely been affected. The timeframe is set back, and everyone is hesitating as they wait to see how the political and economic situations play out.”

De Wind, who has worked in emerging markets since 1992 and enjoys being in Los Angeles, away from the group mentalities that emerge in financial nerve centers like New York and London, quickly stresses that his company has none of its clients’ money invested in Russia yet. Moreover, he says that the deals, which range from the real estate to airplane industries and are worth up to $200 million, have simply been postponed.

The fact that Hollister is fully protected financially from the Russian meltdown, however, hasn’t protected De Wind from nervous clients’ calls.

“Our clients have called every day over the last two weeks or so, wanting to know how badly we got beat up,” De Wind said. “When I tell them that we don’t have any money over (in Russia) yet, there is a huge sense of relief. There are always a few clients that are more uptight than others, however. Our clients trust our strategies.”

For the last two weeks, De Wind has received nightly phone calls from government officials and his business partners in Russia. They let him know about the latest changes in the political and economic scene that otherwise don’t make Western news outlets.

Despite late-night phone calls, De Wind says he’s not losing any sleep.

“The funny thing is that everyone expected this to happen, we just didn’t know exactly when,” he said. “This is the liability of working in emerging markets, which are like the Wild West. The opportunity for returns is as enormous as the potential pitfalls. We just made sure that we were protected and prepared.”

While De Wind acknowledges being frustrated by the upheaval, he believes that the economic problems can actually assist his future negotiations in Russia. Russian businessmen and politicians are facing a reality check on how much their propositions are really worth.

“Russia is finally getting a sense that they can’t be so cocky,” De Wind said. “They have to realize that this is a country where spreads aren’t going to be 150 over treasuries. Investment banks will have to work for real fees based on emerging market credit. The chips have been knocked off their shoulders.”

Although Russia’s situation grows shakier by the day, De Wind is still moving forward, still confident that Russia is a place his company wants to be.

“The demand for these projects we’re involved in is there, and my work is still on the front burner, assuming things stabilize over time,” he said. “There are huge opportunities there, but I do know that it will be a slow process. We’ll see how it goes from here.”

The Freight Forwarder

Overseas economies may be going to hell in a hand basket, but Raymond Donahue, the top executive at Inglewood-based freight forwarding company Panalpina Inc., is enjoying the ride.

The company, which works heavily with high-tech clients in the Pacific Rim, has actually seen its revenue grow over the last several months. The weakening Asian markets have caused Panalpina’s import shipments to triple, more than offsetting the freight forwarder’s losses due to the depressed export market.

“The import market has grown tremendously for us over the last several months, and we’re doing our best to keep up with the demand,” Donahue said. “Even imports from Europe have increased a bit, but nowhere near the level from Asia.”

Freight forwarders essentially act as travel agents for companies importing or exporting their goods. Freight forwarders shepherd cargo from the point of origin to the point of delivery, arranging shipments’ passage, clearing customs, and doing all the necessary paperwork.

Donahue said that Panalpina is projecting its 1998 revenue figures to be ahead of last year’s, although not by a large margin. In a business in which some companies have lost their shirts this year, he points out, this kind of financial performance is entirely acceptable.

“Let’s say that we’re cautiously optimistic about continued economic instability,” Donahue said. “We look at things in the long term, and there are always going to be downturns and crises. At this point, I’m concentrating on the problems that come from having a one-sided trade balance.”

With Asian countries boosting export levels in an effort to climb out of their financial difficulties, most ocean freight equipment has been heading West. With export levels down, the equipment is not making a return trip.

“All of our containers are over here rather than over there, and we are very concerned about both our ocean and air freight equipment,” Donahue said. “We’re trying to prepare for a higher level of demand for our air charters as companies look for alternative shipping methods.”

Donahue said that with the increased import activity over the last several months, his company is facing difficulty in finding a sufficient number of qualified workers.

Panalpina’s employment problems are likely to grow more critical as the annual Christmas import/export frenzy approaches. After 21 years in the freight forwarding business, Donahue is bracing for the biggest Christmas shipping season he has ever seen, due to the devalued Asian currencies. He expects Panalpina’s import shipping levels to continue climbing.

“There is no way of knowing when the global economy will quiet down, but we saw the financial crisis in Asia coming and we were fairly prepared,” he said. “We intend to stay as prepared as possible as the markets continue to swing.”