Eastern Europe

Market sentiment modestly improves after most Asian stocks fall ; EFSF to delay €3bln bond sale. Greek cabinet endorsed referendum plan overnight; aims to win Friday’s confidence vote. FOMC unlikely to announce further asset purchases,…

In the EMEA space, central banks from Czech Republic, Hungary, South Africa, and Turkey all meet next week. We don’t see any change from these four central banks and in general we believe EM central banks have moved into dovish wait-and-see…

The latest round of EU GDP data, brought to light a reality which many who have been closely following the economies of Eastern Europe already suspected: that the heavily export dependent economies in the region would almost inevitably be…

Edward Hugh writes of an unstable combination which make the countries in Eastern Europe highly vulnerable to both a renewed deterioration in sentiment and an external economic slowdown of the sort we could see following a disorderly Greek…

The BELLS are a group of four countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) who in their wisdom decided to adopt and then stick “come hell or high water” to a currency peg with to Euro. Thus was opened one of the more interesting and…

By Win Thin Malaysia central bank surprised the markets by hiking the statutory reserve requirement 100 bp bp while leaving policy rates unchanged at 2.75%. The bank noted that “While the stance of monetary policy is expected to remain…

by Win Thin Markets have given a big thumbs down to the austerity measures announced by Hungary this week, with the forint and foreign currency bonds giving up some of their recent gains.  The government is still trying to go it alone…

by Edward Hugh Not only is the French economy the grateful recipient and beneficiary of sustained German export growth, so too is Poland (I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear that in Warsaw!). According to the FTs Jan Cienski: German recovery…

By Win Thin, Senior Currency Strategist, BBH In light of recent attention on Eastern Europe, here are some thoughts on Romania. The government has been unable to sell local debt at its self-imposed cap of 7% because investors have been…

By Win Thin, Senior Currency Strategist, BBH Harvard Professor (and former IMF official) Kenneth Rogoff expects some Eastern European countries to face sovereign crises over next 2-3 years.  In a weekend interview, Rogoff predicted…