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| The Grand Turk |
| Turkey: Debt Growing, Currency Sinking, Kurds outbreeding Turks |
| 2011-08-10 |
| 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 |
| #3 I should have defined "current account deficit". It is essentially the balance of trade adjusted for foreign aid and various interest and dividends coming into the treasury from foreign holdings. The US current account deficit is about 4%. |
| Posted by: Lord Garth 2011-08-10 13:20 |
| #2 The Kurds are ascending, and they know it. For many years they were as troublesome as the Jews were before they had Israel. Restless and combative no matter where they lived, with a clear focus of what they want. And this tends to give a people a lot of intestinal fortitude. The Kurds are also like the Jews because of that rare attribute that makes them *appreciate* high intelligence in their leaders. My jaw about dropped when I first heard Kurd spokesmen speak, in perfect American English and with the persuasive abilities of a top notch lobbyist. I knew then that they would quickly curry favor with Washington. And now that they effectively have their own country, albeit within Iraq, it has made the Kurds in Iran, Turkey and Syria extra "itchy". Not to migrate to Iraq, but to expand Iraqi Kurdistan into a "greater Kurdistan". Since they cannot do this by force of arms, they are doing with the other tool at their disposal, population increase, whether consciously or not. Yet ironically, at the same time, the Arab world is in decline in a major way, demographically. They are depressed and unhappy, being caught between the nastiness of Islam and the nastiness of authoritarian socialism, and they are sick to death of both of them. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-08-10 10:24 |
| #1 It's a shame! |
| Posted by: gr(o)mgoru 2011-08-10 03:24 |