Word: euros
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...Economic cooperation is the crown jewel of the EU and demands preservation if the EU is to endure. The Euro currency is used by 16 EU nations, which together constitute an economy the same size as the United States’s, and the fair-weather economic interdependence has been a lucrative source of prestige. The EU simply cannot afford to so accurately fulfill Euroskeptic predictions and allow its unity shatter in more turbulent economic conditions...
...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...
...Europe now fears the narrow instinct of individual governments will be to look to their own backyards first, only thinking of the European dimension as an afterthought. Without any clear direction, there is also a risk that instability in the east could infect everyone else and drag down the euro. Last week, Moody's Investor Services, a credit-rating agency, warned of default risks for banks in six western European states that are overextended in the east. If that occurs, it could jeopardize one of the E.U.'s finest achievements, the embrace and revival of Eastern Europe...
...directly or through local subsidiaries. Austrian banks alone have a more than $293 billion exposure to Eastern Europe, roughly 80% of the Austrian GDP. When, on February 17, rating agency Moody's warned that it might downgrade a number of western European banks with exposure to the region, the euro plunged to a three month low of $1.26 against the dollar. "Given the combination of banking and trade links between Eastern and Western Europe that have been built up over the past five to ten years, it's clear that this cannot be seen as a self-contained regional 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...