The Economist Intelligence Unit warns:
State handouts cannot continue indefinitely, not least because reserves no longer cover total foreign liabilities: on the basis total debt was US$540bn at the end of September 2008, and that US$73bn was repaid in the fourth quarter, total debt is now US$467bn and private-sector debt US$425bn. Russia entered the crisis with [...]

The International Labour Organization forecast this week that as many as 51 million jobs could be lost worldwide in 2009 due to the global economic crisis. But if I look at some of the numbers hitting my desk this week, even this estimate cound prove to be a conservative one.
Here in the EU, the most [...]

Spain’s economy is now most evidently, and totally and completely officially, in its first recession since 1993. The final confirmation of this came yesterday when the Bank of Spain released its quarterly report on the Spanish economy. According to the bank, gross domestic product fell by 1.1% in the final quarter of 2008 (over the [...]

IMF Senior Regional Representative For Central Europe and the Baltics, Christoph Rosenberg, recently took me to task on RGE Monitor about my Latvian devaluation proposal (as did RGE’s own Mary Stokes), and I would like now to take a closer look at some of the points they raise. Beware, this is not for the faint [...]

Going to be an interesting year again here in the Caucasus.
Russia will start building a naval base this year in Georgia’s Black Sea separatist region of Abkhazia, Russian media reported on Monday, a step Tbilisi said would violate its sovereignty. …
Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency quoted an unnamed official at Russian naval headquarters as saying commanders [...]

Over at English Russia, Sergei Larenkov has merged historic photos form the siege of Leningrad with contemporary pictures taken from the same vantage point. Flak balloons, protective scaffolding, ruins and dead bodies juxtaposed with SUVs, modern busses, restored facades. Fascinating work.
Don’t miss his links to other photo projects down at the bottom of the post. [...]

Wow everyone, I presume it is just a coincidence that my Czech Post went live yesterday, but gee, there’s nothing like being ahead of the curve, is there? Bloomberg is running this story this morning:
The Czech economy may fall into a recession this year as export demand weakens, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said, iHned reported. [...]

We’re about to find out whether the rest of the world is still dependent on demand in the US. If it is, better set those expectations down a bit further.
The U.S. economy contracted violently in the fourth quarter, with gross domestic product falling at its fastest pace in more than 25 years, economists said ahead [...]

The highly open Czech economy is set to slow down considerably, affected by the deteriorating outlook for its main trading partners. Although GDP growth was still solid in Q3 2008, both exports and imports growth slowed significantly. The global crisis is expected to adversely impact the real economy particularly from the fourth quarter of 2008. [...]

This is a couple of days old, but it doesn’t seem to have gotten much attention.
It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, given Iceland’s devastating economic situation. It’s not clear, though, just what the precipitating incident was. As late as Wednesday, the Prime Minister was saying that he wouldn’t step down, no, [...]