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Hungary's Exports And Industrial Output Fall Again Sharply
Hungary posted a foreign trade surplus of EUR 279.2 million in February. As a result the balance for the first two months has turned positive (EUR 85.1 m). That is the good news. The bad news is that...
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Is Hungary Set To Become The New Iceland?
Iceland, why on earth Iceland? Well, the issue I have in mind concerns the independence and viability of central bank monetary policy (especially in a small open economy like Hungary's) and the role...
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Taking Solow Seriously - Does Neoclassical Steady State Growth Really Exist?
Discussions of the population problem have always had the capacity to stir up public sentiment much more than most other problems....In fact, the discussion of the population problem seems at all times...
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Hungary's Trend Growth And Debt Sustainability
My previous post is very long, pretty technical, and probably over-theoretical for a weblog post, and for this I apologise to readers. However, abstract as it may seem, taking a view - on one side or...
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The New Orthodoxy Is Upon Us
We seem to be witnessing the arrival of some kind of new financial orthodoxy. The IMF put it like this in the Hungary Standby Loan Report (which by chance I was reading last night):In emerging market...
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Green Shoots In Germany, Estonia and Hungary?
Well, I am busying myself this morning scratching around looking for green shoots in Turkey. But even as I was digging for these I couldn't help notice this coming in over the radar from Germany,...
View ArticleFacebook Links
Quietly clicking my way through Bloomberg last Sunday afternoon, I came across this:Facebook Members Register Names at 550 a SecondFacebook Inc., the world’s largest social-networking site, said...
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Hungary Struggles To Apply Its Own Unique Version Of "Internal Devaluation"
Just what the hell is going on in Hungary? This is the question which even the most cursory inspection of the latest round of data coming out of the country leads me to ask myself. What the hell is...
View ArticleEscaping Original Sin in Hungary?
by Claus Vistesen: CopenhagenAccording to the well known textbook in international economics by Maurice Obstfeld and Paul Krugman [1] the notion of original sin refers to the fact that many developing...
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From Original Sin To The Eternal Triangle - Lessons From Central Europe
The non-biblical concept of original sin, as Claus Vistesen notes in this post, when propounded in its standard Obstfeld & Krugman textbook version refers to the situation where many developing...
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As Hungary's "Correction" Heads For A Dead End, Time For A Change Of Course?
Hungary's economic correction still fails to convince. Indeed I am not the only one who remains unconvined by the viability of what is currently taking place it seems, since according to the opposition...
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Global Manufacturing, France Outperforms, As Spain Continues To Flounder
Well, it is not as if I relish rubbing salt into old wounds, but this quote from the latest piece by Ben Hall in Paris and Ralph Atkins in today's Financial Times is just too good to resist.French...
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Hungary's Economic Correction Still Fails To Convince
"Hungary’s potential economic growth should be 2 percentage points over the corresponding EU figure in order to ensure convergence".Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai, speaking in London in October Two...
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Hungary Isn't Another Greece........Now Is It?
I couldn't help being struck earlier this week by the following statement in an interview the Financial Times had with Hungarian Finance Minister, Peter Oszkó:"Structural reforms of the pension and...
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So where is Hungary?
Response to Edward Hughby Peter OszkoMinister of Finance, HungaryThe financial crisis has re-shaped the regions and countries in financial terms. New country groups emerge in analyses and decisions by...
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Just What Is The Real Level Of Government Debt In Europe?
“If you don’t fully understand an instrument, don’t buy it.”To the above advice from Emilio Botín, Executive Chairman of Spain’s Grupo Santander, I would simply add one small rider: Don’t sell it...
View ArticleThe Comeback of a Political Survivor
Guest Post by Mark PittawayThe outright victory of Viktor Orbán’s FIDESZ party in the first round of Hungary’s parliamentary elections on 11 April, and the likeliehood that they will win a two-thirds...
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Contagion Turns East
Well, I don't know how many other people have noticed, but the Hungarian forint has been having rather a hard time of it over the past few days. The currency was down by as much 1.3 percent against the...
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The Price Of Power
Hell, it seems, knows no fury like the financial markets being told you are about to become the next Greece. The poor Vice President of the election-winning Fidesz party, Lajos Kosa, had no idea what...
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Smoke On The East European Horizon?
"The market is pricing these sovereigns at much wider levels than where their agency ratings would imply," said Diana Allmendinger, a director at Fitch Solutions.CDS on Italy imply a rating of BBB,...
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