The following article comes from Absolute Return Partners’ Niels Jensen. Absolute Return Partners LLP is a London based private partnership which provides independent asset management and investment advisory services globally to institutional as well as private investors, charities, foundations and trusts. Visit www.arpllp.com to learn more about them.

Yesterday, Latvia was downgraded to junk. Despite its diminutive size, this is a big deal. Fist, it is a harbinger of what is to come for the rest of Eastern Europe. But, more importantly it is a signal that Western European banks lending in the former Soviet Bloc are overexposed and threatened by large loan losses. In a global economy in which European banks lend at home, but also have significant U.S. mortgage debt and Eastern European loan exposure, events in Latvia will have a snowball effect.

While the EU, IMF and World Bank are all busily drafting up crisis solutions, the videos below should give a little colour on what this means for the economy, credit and investing.

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This comes from Austrian Daily Kurier:
A plan to stabilise the economies of Eastern Europe exists. What is missing is a united EU.
During and after the Eastern Europe tour by Austrian Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister Josef Pröll, the Ministry always profusely denied that there was a plan to support the new [EU] countries. The talk was [...]

The following post is from John Mauldin, who is a Best-Selling author and recognized financial expert. He is also editor of the free Thoughts From the Frontline that goes to over 1 million readers each week. For more information on John or his FREE weekly economic letter go to: http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/learnmore

The Risk in Europe

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Here is yet another post from early last year which presages all of the problems we are seeing today. As I have often written, the fake recovery is just an attempt to paper over these problems. It won’t work. Where Ireland, Switzerland, Austria or the Baltics were front and center in February 2009, Greece, Spain and Portugal are now. But don’t think those other problems have gone away. As with Northern Rock, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, contagion spreads to the weakest link – which either passes the test (usually with external aid) or collapses. And then it’s on to the next weakest link. That’s how crises work. This one is no different.

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FT Alphaville has a post up indicating that the UBS EMEA economics team is much more sanguine about prospects in Eastern Europe than many market participants. The most important part of the UBS contents reads as follows:
We don’t normally respond directly to articles in the financial press, but quite a number of clients [...]

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This video does not mention Austria by name, focusing instead on Ireland, Spain and Greece, but Austria is more of the problem for the Germans as they are leveraged to Eastern Europe.
German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck became the first senior policy maker to broach the topic this week, saying some of the 16 euro [...]

In an interview with Swiss daily Tagesanzeiger, a well-known economist has warned that Switzerland risks bankruptcy, if the recent market turmoil centering on Eastern Europe is not contained quickly. At issue are loans made in Swiss Francs to Eastern European debtors. With many countries in the region falling into depression, currencies and asset prices are plunging. Therefore, debtors domiciled in Eastern Europe are increasingly expected to have difficulty with mounting foreign debt loads — and that spells trouble for Switzerland.

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The video below gives an excellent view into the issues affecting European banking. Tom Keene, who is Bloomberg Radio’s editor-at-large, sees the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the ultimate solution to the problems in Eastern Europe. As the IMF is funded in large part by richer nations, any bailout will ultimately be financed by [...]