Word: czechs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...country-by-country basis, as well as repeated mantras about avoiding protectionism. But if the show of unity was unconvincing, the issues are very real. Crashing exchange rates, soaring debts and failing banks: eastern European economies have fallen far faster and harder than their richer, Western neighbors. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek - whose country currently holds the E.U.'s presidency - says the developing recession is "the greatest crisis in the history of European integration...
...Poland's zloty has dropped 29% against the euro in the past six months, the Hungarian forint by 20%, the Romanian Ieu 17% and the Czech koruna 12%. Latvia has now followed Romania in seeing its government bonds labeled as junk by Standard & Poor's rating agency. (Its government was forced to quit two weeks ago). Once lauded as darlings of global capitalism, these countries now warn of social and political unrest if their economies are allowed to collapse. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
...downturn is playing havoc with Eastern Europe's currencies. Since last summer, the Polish zloty has lost 48% against Europe's common currency the euro, the Hungarian forint 30% and the Czech Krona 23%. That makes euro-denominated debt, which has risen dramatically anyway in the past few years, much harder to pay back. In Poland, foreign currency debt held by households has tripled in three years to 12% of the GDP last year, with some 70% of mortgages taken in foreign currencies. In Hungary, foreign currency loans make up 62% of all household debt, up from 33% three years...
...they're talking, it sounds as if many European leaders don't want to give their American peers much choice in the matter. German host Chancellor Angela Merkel said the group-France, Italy, Britain, Luxembourg, Spain, the Netherlands and Czech Republic-had agreed to measures they will insist be adopted at the G20 meeting in London in early April. "All financial markets, products and participants including hedge funds and other private pools of capital which may pose a systematic risk must be subjected to appropriate oversight or regulation," Merkel said in a summit statement. "A clear message and concrete action...
...Dramatic stuff-but will it ever fly in Washington? Or even everywhere in Europe? "If I put it very tenderly, the divergence in opinions was rather big," said Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country currently holds the E.U.'s rotating presidency. In Sunday's meeting, Topolanek defended the liberal market orthodoxy of many central European members and the U.S. is likely to look to countries like the Czech Republic for support in defining some "lowest-common-denominator rules" that everyone can accept, says Duckenfield. Which may leave other European leaders talking tough but unable to get their...