Controversy surrounding the Romanian economy is nothing new, nor, as a href="http://globaleconomydoesmatter.blogspot.com/2008/11/romania-votes-under-new-electoral.html"Manuel points out in his post on the recent election/a, are Romanian politics strangers to tumult. Nonetheless the intensity of controversy has grown considerably of late, with a wide variety of assessments being offered concerning the likely impact of the intensifying international credit crisis on the short to medium term outlook for the Romanian economy. National Bank of Romania (NBR) governor, Mugur Isarescu, has been consistently arguing that the country should be able to avoid an excessively "hard landing"as the bank attempts to cool its evidently overheated economy and engages of fire-extinguising activities in the banking sector trying to control the impact of set of adverse external circumstances that are largely beyond its control. But most of these comments (or at least the more convincing ones) preceded the meltdown in the international financial markets which followed the Lehman Brothers ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /Controversy surrounding the Romanian economy is nothing new, nor, as a href="http://globaleconomydoesmatter.blogspot.com/2008/11/romania-votes-under-new-electoral.html"Manuel points out in his post on the recent election/a, are Romanian politics strangers to tumult. Nonetheless the intensity of controversy has grown considerably of late, with a wide variety of assessments being offered concerning the likely impact of the intensifying international credit crisis on the short to medium term outlook for the Romanian economy.National Bank of Romania (NBR) governor, Mugur Isarescu, has been consistently arguing that the country should be able to avoid an excessively "hard landing"as the bank attempts to cool its evidently overheated economy and engages of fire-extinguising activities in the banking sector trying to control the impact of set of adverse external circumstances that are largely beyond its control. But most of these comments (or at least the more convincing ones) preceded the meltdown in the international financial markets which ...

Russia's foreign-exchange reserves have been declining rapidly since mid August, and with the money which is flowing out may go almost a decade of economic stability which they brought. Russia's international reserves, which are the third-biggest after China's and Japan's, have now fallen $161 billion, or 27% percent, since 8 August, and decreased by $17.9 billion to $437 billion in the week to 5 December. Investors have pulled $211 billion out of the country since August, according to BNP Paribas.br /br /br /But just how difficult this is proving to be was illustrated only this morning as Russia’s central bank devalued the ruble for the second time in a only a week, and the ruble fell as much as 1.3 percent (to a four-year low of 37.5015 per euro) following the decision by Bank Rossii to widen the trading band against the basket of dollars and euros used by the ...

Financial NewsJason Corcoran in Moscow and Harry Wilson17 Nov 2008 Moscow-based investment bankers are at the sharp end of job cutsRussian index slumpsIt seems like a different age, but it was only recently that Moscow-based investment bankers had firms fighting to secure their services and could command pay packages commensurate with demand.Senior Moscow-based bankers and those covering the Russian markets asked for and got lucrative pay deals as local brokers and large international investment banks fought a hiring war to build their businesses in the country.Guaranteed packages in excess of $10m (€7.8m) were not unheard of and even junior staff with experience of the Russian markets received $1m guarantees to join rivals.In early 2007, Russian investment bank Alfa-Bank recruited the head of UBS’ Moscow office Ed Kaufman for a ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaThe euro fell against the dollar yesterday - by the largest amount registered in any single day since the introduction of the single currency in 1999. The drop was effectively a response to the growing signs of strain in Europe's banking sector. Activity in support of banks was widespread throught the day, and across the whole system. The euro fell 2.5 percent to $1.4077 by mid morning in New York, down from $1.4434 on Monday. Early this morning in Europe it was trading in the $1.41 range.This current pressure on the euro is more the result of signs of liquidity problems in the banking sector than it is a response to the growing weaknesses in the eurozone real economies, which, as we saw at the end of last week, are really pretty substantial in their own right. What follows is simply ...