Eastern Europe

A friend living in Latvia wrote that he was "stunned by the chaos that broke out in Riga this evening." I had heard absolutely nothing about it until he told me. Apparently, a peaceful protest outside Parliament turned bloody when the…

The row between Russia and Ukraine over payments for natural gas looks to be de-escalating. Gazprom has committed to letting the gas flow freely again after the EU requested this action be taken. The question now is whether the core issue…

The Ukraine-Russia row over natural gas has escalated to a new high. Now, state-owned Gazprom has completely cut off supplies to Europe through the Ukrainian transit route. It still remains unclear what the ultimate aim of the Russians…

As an article in my links yesterday suggested, for many in the west, Russia's behavior of late has lurched toward the unpredictable, volatile and aggressive. After Russia's moves against Georgia in South Ossetia, wariness in the west has…

Trolling the web today as is my wont, I happened across an interesting article about the Austrian finance company Immofinanz. It seems that Immofinanz got caught up in the Eastern European property market. Unfortunately, its investments…

Has Paul Krugman been reading my stuff? He is certainly thinking like me regarding emerging market risk. He has a post today talking about Latvia as the new Argentina.

By now, you are familiar with the carry trade, where one borrows in one's own currency in order to invest in higher yielding foreign assets, often times with significant leverage. The Japanese were famous for making this trade in…

In the last few weeks, the currency market is where the action has been. We have witnessed massive moves in every major currency and in some not so major ones. To my mind, all of this is a prelude to some sort of currency crisis. This…