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At first blush, there's a pretty close correlation between a country having a significant Starbucks presence, especially in its financial capital, and major financial cock-ups -- from Australia (big blowups in finance, hedge funds and asset management companies; 23 stores) to the United Kingdom (nationalization of its largest banks).
In many ways, London in recent years has been a more concentrated version of New York -- the wellspring of many toxic innovations, a hedge-fund haven. It sports 256 Starbucks outlets. In Spain, which is now grappling with the bursting of a speculative coastal real-estate bubble (sound familiar?), the financial capital, Madrid, has 48 outlets.
In crazy Dubai, 48 Starbucks outlets serve a population of 1.4 million. South Korea, which is bailing out its banks big-time, has 253; Paris, the locus of several embarrassing debacles, has 35.
But there are many spots on the globe where it's tough to find a Starbucks. And these are precisely the places where banks are surviving, in large part because they have not financially integrated with banks in the Starbucks economies.
In the entire continent of Africa, whose banks don't stray too far, I count just three (in Egypt). We haven't heard much about bailouts in Central America, where Starbucks has no presence.
South America's banks may be buckling, but they haven't broken. Argentina, formerly a financial basket case and now a pocket of relative strength, has just one store. Brazil, with a population of nearly 200 million, has a mere 14.
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And the small countries of Northern Europe, whose banking systems have been largely spared, are mostly Starbucks-free. (There are two in Denmark, three in the Netherlands, and none in the Scandinavian trio of Sweden, Finland and Norway.)
My tentative theory: Having a significant Starbucks presence is a pretty significant indicator of the degree of connectedness to the form of highly caffeinated, free-spending capitalism that got us into this mess.
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The fact that the company or its local licensee felt there was room for dozens of outlets where consumers would pony up lots of euros, liras and rials for expensive drinks is also a pretty good indicator that excessive financial optimism had entered the bloodstream.
This theory isn't foolproof. Some places that have relatively high concentrations of Starbucks, such as Santiago, Chile (27), have been havens. Russia, which has just six, has blown up. But it's close enough.
And so, if you're looking for potential trouble spots, forget about the Financial Times or the Bloomberg terminal. Just look at the user-friendly Starbucks store locator.
The next potential trouble spot? I just returned from a week in Istanbul, Turkey, a booming financial capital increasingly tied to the fortunes of Western Europe. It has a storied coffee culture, yet I gave up counting the number of Starbucks stores occupying prime real estate. It turns out there are 67 of them. Watch out, Turkey.
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