Letonia, al borde del abismo: fracasa la venta de deuda pública y aumentan los temores sobre la devaluación de la divisa - Cotizalia.com

La crisis económica a la que se enfrenta Letonia empieza a adquirir tintes dramáticos. Ayer fracasó la venta de deuda pública por parte del Gobierno, poniendo de manifiesto las dificultades a las que empiezan a enfrentarse los países emergentes a la hora de encontrar compradores ante las ingentes emisiones de deuda pública que empiezan a inundar los mercados de crédito.

Ayer, el Gobierno letón intentó vender 100,8 millones de dólares en deuda a corto plazo, pero sin éxito, debido a los temores a una posible devaluación de la moneda local, el lat. Este fracaso supuso un duro revés para las divisas de otros países de Europa del Este y se tradujo en importantes caídas en bolsa de los bancos suecos, fuertemente expuestos a la región báltica.

El florín húngaro cayó un 2,4%, mientras que el zloty polaco retrocedió un 0,7% y la krona sueca, un 1,3%. Las ventas también se apoderaron de los bancos suecos. Swedbank se derrumbó un 16%, mientras que Skandinaviska Enskilda Bankne (SEB) se dejó un 11%. En la última semana, ambas entidades han perdido más de un 10%. Swedbank aseguró el martes que la devaluación de las divisas bálticas acelerará sus préstamos de mala calidad en la región, aunque no alterará sustancialmente sus pérdidas crediticias de los últimos tres años.

Los temores en torno a la devaluación del lat cobró fuerza el pasado martes cuando un asesor sueco del primer ministro letón, Valdis Dombrovskis, aseguró que era sólo cuestión de tiempo. "Letonia parece haber alcanzado el punto de no retorno, ya que su tipo de cambio fijo puede no sobrevivir mucho más", dijo TD Securities en una nota de investigación. Por su parte, desde Nordea esperan que se evite la devaluación sería evitada, aunque apuntan que eso depende de que Letonia se asegure más financiación del paquete de rescate.

Dombrovskis, evitó ayer las preguntas en torno a una posible devaluación de la divisa local durante una entrevista en la CNBC tras el cierre de las bolsas europeas, aunque dijo que el país necesita alcanzar cuando antes un acuerdo con el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) y la Unión Europea para asegurarse el segundo tramo del préstamo de 7.500 millones de euros -10.700 millones de dólares- concedido en diciembre de 2008 tras el fracaso de otra subasta de deuda pública y la presión sobre el lats, la divisa del país.

La atención está puesta ahora en que el Parlamento apruebe una enmienda del presupuesto 2009, un paso necesario para asegurar más financiación. El primer ministro dijo que espera obtener 1.200 millones de euros más en créditos del FMI y la Unión Europea en julio. En mayo, el FMI ya retrasó una transferencia de 200 millones de euros, después de que el Gobierno letón fracasara en su intento de implementar recortes presupuestarios.

Los analistas señalan que el fracaso en la subasta de bonos del Tesoro refleja una enorme falta de liquidez en el mercado nacional provocada por las continuas intervenciones del banco central para apoyar a la moneda local. De hecho, la autoridad monetaria ha comprado más de 1.800 millones de euros desde comienzos de 2008 con el objetivo de retirarlos del mercado y propiciar la escasez de la divisa en el mercado.

"Contra el telón de fondo de un déficit fiscal 2009 potencialmente cercano a los dos dígitos, claramente este fracaso va al corazón de las vulnerabilidades de Letonia y empieza a disminuir más significativamente la capacidad del Gobierno de aguantar", explica Gyula Toth, economista especializado en la Europa emergente de Unicredit en Viena. Letonia atraviesa una profunda recesión. La economía se contrajo un 18% durante el primer trimestre, el mismo porcentaje que se espera para el conjunto del año, al tiempo que se prevé un déficit público del 9% del PIB.

La recesión económica ha obligado a los Gobiernos de todo el planeta a poner en marcha imortantes planes de rescate económico. Unos planes que están intentando financieras con emisiones de deuda pública, que han aumentado ha medida que la crisis se intensificaba, provocando problemas para colocar dicha deuda en determinados de la economía europea, Letonia entre ellos.

Las cosas internacionalmente están muy mal, lo malo, es que si te ven extranjero te querrán robar, porque sino apateceria ir, lo malo es que vas a gastar unos dineros que puede que en el futuro te hagan falta, no lo sé.

Latvia has become the first EU country to face a sovereign debt crisis after failing to sell a single bill at a treasury auction worth $100m (£61m), prompting fears of a fresh storm in Eastern Europe as capital flight tests currency pegs.



Latvia may be a small country but it has vast repercussions for the region,” said Bartosz Pawlowski, of BNP Paribas. “If the currency breaks in Latvia, it is likely to break in Estonia and Lithuania as well, and perhaps Bulgaria, with effects on other countries like Romania.”
Fresh turbulence in the ex-Communist bloc would rattle West European banks, which have €1.3 trillion of exposure to the region. “We haven’t yet seen the full extent of the crisis in the East European banking system. Defaults are creeping higher,” he said.

The G20 deal in April to triple the IMF’s fire-fighting fund to $750bn has reduced the risk of a currency conflagration, but while

the larger reserves will buy time, it does not change the fact that some countries have taken on too much debt.
Latvia’s premier Valdis Dombrovskis warned against a devaluation “quick fix” but may have fuelled the flames further by admitting that the lat is overvalued by a third.

“If we’re talking of devaluation, it definitely won’t be less than 15pc. It’ll most likely be 30pc. Real incomes will shrink very fast. The immediate shock will affect absolutely everyone and everything,” he said.

Latvia faces a calamitous hangover after blazing the trail of euro, Swiss franc, and yen mortgages. Fitch Ratings says foreign debt maturing in 2009 is equal to 320pc of foreign reserves.

The finance ministry expects GDP to contract 18pc this year. House prices have fallen 50pc , the world’s most spectacular crash. A third of the country’s teachers are being fired and public salaries will be slashed by up to 35pc to meet bail-out terms imposed by the IMF and the European Commission. The policy risks a deflation spiral that defeats its own purpose.

“The level of adjustment is too extreme and it is testing the social and political fabric of the country,” said Tim Ash, from the Royal Bank of Scotland. “You have to ask whether they are sacrificing the Latvian economy to protect Swedish banks. It would be better to devalue now and clear the air.”

Mr Ash said Latvia had crossed the Rubicon this week when the justice minister called for a debate on the peg and key adviser Bengt Dennis, ex-governor of Sweden’s Riksbank, said the only question about devaluation now was “how it will be carried out”.

The central bank has been burning reserves to defend the lat in Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism, but markets doubt whether Latvia has the political will to carry through draconian cuts in spending – or whether such a policy even makes sense at this stage.

Tremors hit bank shares in Stockholm and triggered a sharp fall in Sweden’s krona. Swedbank, SEB and other Swedish banks have $75bn of exposure to the Baltic states, and face cliff-edge losses if the pegs snap.

Days earlier the Riksbank said it was boosting foreign reserves by $13bn, clearly a precaution in the face of Baltic risk. Swedish officials seem to have accepted that nothing is to be gained from prolonging the Baltic agony. SEB said it faces equal losses either way, slowly under the peg or short and sharp through devaluation.

Leaks suggest that the IMF favours devaluation, the normal cure for countries that overheat. It was overruled by the European Commission, deeming retreat from the ERM peg to be a threat to Europe’s fixed-exchange orthodoxy.

Mr Ash said the crisis was playing out much like the final days of the Russia debacle in 1998 and the end of Turkey’s crawling peg in 2001, with momentum building until a critical point of no return.

Latvian debt crisis shakes Eastern Europe - Telegraph

Pues es el primer paso para que no les estén dando por culo.

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por cierto ..no se si lo voy a encoontrar pero ya ayer volaron un banco en Ucrania


aqui
Al menos 21 heridos por la explosión de una bomba en un banco ucraniano. europapress.es

¿Ein?
Al menos tendrán la excusa de que eres extranjero. Aquí nos roban los nuestros, y a manos llenas.

Lo dicho, igual hay que dar un garbeo veraniego

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I WILL not vote in the overnight European election. I am doing something much more interesting and relevant to the future of Europe and Britain. I am travelling to Riga to speak at the centenary celebrations for Isaiah Berlin, the great Latvian-Jewish philosopher, who explained why democracy and freedom do not always work hand in hand.

Why is this trip to Latvia more important than voting? Because, believe it or not, the future of Europe could be decided by this tiny Baltic state.

Before explaining why this is so, allow me another digression about a remarkable TV BBC documentary. Linked to another cultural centenary, that of Felix Mendelssohn, it is called Mendelssohn, the Nazis and Me.

This film -- charming, hilarious and horrifying in equal measure -- is about the bizarrely legalistic Nazi efforts to expunge all traces of Jewish pollution from Germany's music culture as well as the population in the 1930s, and more generally about the sudden descent of one of the world's most highly educated and civilised nations into a state of collective insanity.

Specifically, the film is about bureaucratic attempts to determine whether Mendelssohn's German descendants were more or less "Jewish" than his music -- a literally life-and-death issue that rested on the Nazi authorities' inability to establish whether the exact proportion of Jewish heredity in the Mendelssohn family was one-quarter or three-sixteenths.

What does this nightmarish experience, which ended luckily for Mendelssohn's descendants, have to do with the future of Europe? Plenty, and the connection runs through tiny Latvia, where I am writing this.

Europe is now in the middle of a perfect storm, a confluence of three separate but interconnected economic crises that threaten far greater devastation than Britain or the US have suffered from the credit crunch: the collapse of German industry and employment; the impending bankruptcy of central European homeowners and businesses; and the threat of government debt defaults from loss of monetary control by the Irish Republic, Greece and Portugal, for instance on the eurozone periphery.

Latvia, partly because it has followed an Argentine-style policy of "fixing" its exchange rate and encouraging its citizens to borrow in euros and Swiss francs, is in the front line of the battle between governments and financial markets, and a humiliating devaluation looks increasingly likely.

A former Swedish finance ministry official brought in by the Government as an adviser admitted last weekend that devaluation was no longer a matter of "if" but of "when and how".

If Latvia does devalue, then the two other Baltic states will almost certainly be forced to follow and the panic will probably move to Romania and Hungary. Beyond that, the contagion is likely to spread to the weakest members of the eurozone: Ireland, Greece, Portugal and probably Austria.

If the crisis expands, other EU governments and especially that of Germany, will face an existential question. Do they commit hundreds of billions of euros to guarantee the debts of fellow EU countries or do they allow government defaults and devaluations that may ultimately break up the single currency and further cripple German industry, as well as the country's domestic banks?

German politicians have insisted publicly that any bailouts or guarantees are out of the question.

Germany has vociferously blocked proposals from Italy, Spain and the European Commission for the EU as a whole to issue bonds and use the proceeds to support governments with weaker credit. But as so often in Europe, the pass has been quietly sold in Brussels while politicians loudly protested their unshakeable commitment to defend it.

In October, a previously unused regulation was discovered, allowing the creation of a E25 billion "balance of payments facility" and authorising the EU to borrow substantial sums under its own "legal personality" for the first time. This facility was doubled in March to E50 billion.

If Latvia's financial problems turn into a full-scale crisis, these guarantees and cross-subsidies between EU governments will increase to hundreds of billions in the months ahead and will certainly mutate into large-scale centralised EU borrowing, jointly guaranteed by all taxpayers of theEU.

This policy of "fiscal federalism" long advocated by France and high-debt countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece, has been fiercely opposed by Germany and Britain. In terms of its potential costs, it makes the agricultural policy and budget rebates seem like a vicarage tombola.

How could German politicians accept such a policy, having repeatedly sworn to oppose it, without sacrificing their unbending sense of moral righteousness? And how can they pervert democracy by telling their electorates they are doing one thing while advocating the exact opposite in the EU?

Much as they did in the case of Mendelssohn and the Nazis, the Germans focus on the letter of the law when they cannot bear to think about the spirit of the rules they are applying, whether unspeakably evil, as in the 1930s, or merely profligate and dishonest, as in the EU today.

The new EU borrowing, for example, is legally an "off-budget" and "back-to-back" arrangement that allows Germany to maintain the legal fiction that it is not guaranteeing the debts of Latvia et al. But the EU's bond prospectus to investors makes quite clear where the financial burden lies: "From an investor's point of view the bond is fully guaranteed by the EU budget and, ultimately, by the EU Member States."

And so the juggernaut of euro-federalism rolls on, but viewed from an increasingly liberal Central Europe, there is a great consolation: the history of euro-federalism keeps being repeated but, as Marx once said, what began as tragedy tends to end in farce.


Great European bailout afoot | The Australian

RIA Novosti - Últimas noticias - Ex presidenta advierte que Letonia podría desaparecer como pompa de jabón después de estallar

Ex presidenta advierte que Letonia podría desaparecer como pompa de jabón después de estallar

11:23 | 05/ 06/ 2009

versión para imprimir

Riga, 5 de junio, RIA Novosti. La ex presidenta de Letonia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, considera que Letonía, país que sufre la mayor caída en el espacio de la Unión Europea, podría estallar como una pompa de jabón.

"Los políticos deben actuar y no esperar que los problemas queden resueltos por arte de magia. De lo contrario, el país entero podría desaparecer como una pompa de jabón después de estallar", dijo Vike-Veiberga en entrevista al diario digital Chas, publicada este viernes.

La ex presidenta expresó su profunda preocupación por la situación económica de esta república báltica y afirmó que a los dirigentes locales les falta la voluntad política para normalizarla.

Letonia vive una grave crisis económica. El Producto Interior Bruto del país cayó el 18% en el primer trimestre de 2009 en relación con el mismo periodo del año anterior.

El primer ministro de Letonia, Valdis Dombrovskis, quien asumió el cargo en marzo pasado, reconoció hace poco que la república está al borde de la bancarrota.

Letonia sopesa devaluar la moneda para evitar la quiebra · ELPAÍS.com

salvando las distancias, claro, ¿puede verse alguna semejanza con Ejpanna?

thanks

La usura amigo,...la usura.

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