As I have just indicated in my last post Hungarians went to the polls yesterday in a vote over whether or not to scrap government-imposed fees on visits to doctors and hospitals introduced as part of a belt-tightening adjustment programme, designed to bring what was at the time of its introduction [...]

Question: how would you have known they were holding a referendum on the government’s difficult and unpopular economic adjustment package in Hungary on Sunday? Answer: just take a look at what happened in the Hungarian financial markets last Friday.
It should not have been too difficult to see all this coming, yet financial analysts [...]

Who knew Hungary has an entire shopping centre devoted to Chinese-owned businesses? Der Standard reports on the “Asia Centre” in the 16th district of Budapest, home to a community that has made Hungary the biggest entrepot for Chinese goods in central Europe. Last year, $4bn of Chinese exports entered Hungary, of which two-thirds was re-exported. [...]

Hungary, as readers of this blog well know, is struggling with a large budget deficit and a terrible balance of payments problem, which has led to a certain amount of trouble. Specifically the fighting in the streets kind. Now, the Socialist government of Ferenc Gyurcsyany came up with a simple plan to cut the deficit [...]

It was only just over two weeks ago (two weeks, which following the logic of a historical time which seems far from uniform, now seem like half a lifetime) that guest poster P. O’Neill, said this:
For understandable reasons — the addition of 10, and soon to be 12, new member countries, and the constitutional crisis, [...]

Just following up briefly on Dougs recent post on Hungary, a right royal poitical scandal now seems to be brewing there since Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany has accepted that a tape recording which was made public over the weekend and which contained comments he made to deputies of his Socialist Party is authentic. The [...]

Just a bit of background info to accompany Doug’s post on AFOE:
“Everybody in Hungary knows that real income will decrease in the next two years … and very significant social groups will feel their interests hurt. If this simple rejection is transformed and mixed with national radicalism and social populism, then this is a dangerous [...]

Because they devalued the forint this summer, so everything is now about 7% cheaper.
Well, they didn’t actually devalue it. No. I mean, that would imply there had been a… devaluation. Ha ha, how silly. No, what happened was that the Bank of Hungary moved the band in which the forint was [...]

For the first time since the fall of Communism, a national election in Hungary is not being followed by a change of government. Eszter points to a useful graphic from Népszabadság, a Bdapest daily newspaper, that shows the compositions of all of Hungary’s post-1989 parliaments. There’s an ebb and flow of parties (particularly the growth [...]

As I noted last week, Hungary now seems to have lost the ‘anchor’ of a 2010 eurozone entry expectation. (see also this, and this ). As I am also indicating currency markets may well be driven at the moment by a combination of interest rate yield variations and expectations of future movements, and this may [...]