The crisis in Hungary recalls the heady days of the UK’s expulsion from the ERM.
The financial crisis spreading like wildfire across the former Soviet bloc threatens to set off a second and more dangerous banking crisis in Western Europe, tipping the whole Continent into a fully-fledged economic slump.
Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe’s monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.
“This is the biggest currency crisis the world has ever seen,” said Neil Mellor, a strategist at Bank of New York Mellon.
Experts fear the mayhem may soon trigger a chain reaction within the eurozone itself. The risk is a surge in capital flight from Austria - the country, as it happens, that set off the global banking collapse of May 1931 when Credit-Anstalt went down - and from a string of Club Med countries that rely on foreign funding to cover huge current account deficits.
The latest data from the Bank for International Settlements shows that Western European banks hold almost all the exposure to the emerging market bubble, now busting with spectacular effect.
They account for three-quarters of the total $4.7 trillion £2.96 trillion) in cross-border bank loans to Eastern Europe, Latin America and emerging Asia extended during the global credit boom - a sum that vastly exceeds the scale of both the US sub-prime and Alt-A debacles.
Continue reading »
Tags: Argentina, Austria, Banks, Brazil, Credit Crisis, Credit Crunch, Dollar, Economy, Euro, GDP, Hedge Funds, Hungary, IMF, Meltdown, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, U.K., U.S.
Both international speculators and ordinary Austrians want to get their hands on gold
