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Turkey: Debt Growing, Currency Sinking, Kurds outbreeding Turks
Bank credit is rising at a 30% rate for households and a 40% rate for business, after adjustment for inflation. The country's GDP growth at an 11% annual rate in the first quarter - the world's highest - because the credit bubble boosted domestic demand."Turkey's current account deficit is a frightening 8 per cent of GDP and is expected to hit 10 per cent before the end of the year," the Financial Times wrote August 4. "And the deficit is badly funded, with only about 15 per cent covered by foreign direct investment and the rest by portfolio flows." Cheez, if it gets any worse they'll be downgraded to AA+... Short-term debt held by banks and hedge funds, that is, finance most of Turkey's enormous deficit and Time is not on Turkey's side. Educated Turks in the more developed West have a fertility rate of about 1.5, the same as Western Europe; the Kurds in the country's impoverished east have four or five children. Kurds, whose independence movement has cost tens of thousands of dead over the past 30 years, may become the majority within two generations. If Turkey holds together at all, it will be quite a different place. Posted by: Lord Garth 2011-08-10 |
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