Marshall Auerback here.  I want to add a few thoughts on the situation in Latvia which Ed has highlighted on several occasions. His allusion to Argentina to describe the situation in the Baltics last July was on the money. I have a solution here out of the Argentine playbook.
In Latvia, the neo-liberal insanity continues.  The [...]

The following is my translation of a much-discussed article that appeared in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet at the weekend.  This information was being withheld from the public and leaked at an inopportune moment.
Note that the Swedish government has secretly been preparing the banks for financial Armageddon, encouraging Swedbank into a rights issue which arguably was [...]

Today, Moody’s warned that Iceland, Latvia and Hungary were stabilizing but that their economies remained fragile. The problem is high debt levels, which is restraining consumer spending. Recovery in the Eurozone has been the main aid to stabilization, the report said. Absent this support, the outlook is considerably worse.
Moody’s re-affirmed Iceland and Hungary’s ratings of [...]

Both Latvia’s and Estonia’s debt ratings were downgraded by Standard and Poors.  Estonia was cut from A to A-, while Latvia was cut to BB+ to BB – its considered high yield securities aka junk bonds. This should come as no surprise as both countries have been in the news due to severe economic dislocations [...]

Earnings season is upon us and the Swedish banks have begun reporting earnings. Their results have seen huge writedowns that demonstrate large and continued exposure to souring loans in the Baltics.
Handelsbanken and Nordea reported today. Despite the writedowns, you do get the sense that things are going better than expected as the banks beat [...]

This is my translation of an article from Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish daily.
Swedish banks are planning to write down Latvian personal loans by 10 percent. However, the proposal includes only a small part of the Latvia’s mountain of debt.
The criteria for qualifying for the program, as it stands right now, is quite strict. So there [...]

I am not the only one who sees events in Latvia as a potential catalyst for further downside risk to the reflation trade.  Mary Stokes over at Nouriel Roubini’s site has a very readable post out on why we should be watching events in that tiny Baltic nation for potential signs of contagion elsewhere.  She [...]

This is the assessment of den Danske Bank as reported by Edward Hugh.  The last time I mentioned the Baltics was on May 12th in my post “A bearish view on Eastern Europe.”  I ended saying the Scandinavian banks’ exposure to the Baltics is just as worrying and should be the place to watch before [...]

This morning you may have read Gideon Rachman’s positive view on Hungary.  He said the panic is all but over and it looks like Hungry is going to get through this debt crisis.
The horror scenario envisaged a Hungarian banking collapse that would ripple back into the rest of Europe and then around the world. Many [...]

Today I saw two blurbs about Eastern Europe which I want to pull together with a bit of added commentary about the automakers in the U.S.  The first blurb had to do with the Baltics and their probable downgrade to junk by the ratings agencies.  This is what Win Thin, a Senior Currency Strategist at [...]