Dominoes from the East: The European Debt Crisis

LONDON — A recent survey suggests that 37 percent of Britons expect riots in the next year on account of the financial collapse; in Kiev, Ukrainians have already made runs on major banks, being turned away from even the nation's largest institutions with empty pockets.

The European Union is ripping apart at its most vulnerable seam: that between well-established Western economies and former Soviet states still grappling to build viable capitalist systems.

Earlier this week I was in Brussels for an emergency summit of EU presidents who had gathered to discuss the worsening economic climate. Debate pitted the East versus the West. But calls on the region's economic elite — the likes of Germany, the UK, and France — to act directly to absorb the crisis fell on astonishingly deaf ears. A plea from Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany for a $230 billion aid package for the fledgling East was purportedly met with literal silence.

While the 27 nations presented a united front in agreeing to abstain from protectionism, the power players remained steadfast that support should come from the International Monetary Fund, rather than directly from their own coffers.

The disaster that's on the verge of showing its full brunt, though, stems as much from the West of Europe as from the East. Major banks from within the Eurozone — those nations employing the euro as their currency — have fueled growth in Eastern Europe in recent years. Austrian, Italian, French, Belgian, German and Swedish institutions, when all tolled, account for 84 percent of loans in Eastern and Central Europe. And that credit was largely given in euros.

But because of the collapse of local currencies outside the Eurozone — some falling by as much as 28-40 percent — even those ventures and households that might otherwise remain stable in a period of decline are likely to be in serious turmoil.

Loans taken out by Hungarians, Latvians, Ukrainians and others dashing to achieve living standards comparable to those of Western Europe, were overwhelmingly granted in euros rather than local currencies.

Hungary's central bank says that 90 percent of loans awarded to households in 2008 were in either euros or francs. In Latvia, lending went from 60 percent in foreign currency in 2004 to 90 percent in 2008, according to the Economist. Recent strikes in Kiev by truck drivers were fueled by the fact that loans for their trucks had been made in euros rather than hryvnia.

During the boom, it made sense to take on credit in more stable currency than rapidly appreciating local tender. The fact that the nations in question were on course to join the Eurozone further fueled the argument that it was safe to borrow in euros. But now the risk is far more lucid.

Imagine, for a moment, if your family's loan payments jumped from a quarter or third of your monthly earnings to nearly double that amount? Could you suffice? For most American families the answer is unequivocally no, and for most Eastern Europeans the answer will be the same.

The debts owed by a great number of Eastern Europeans have thus instantly risen — and dramatically so. And just as those banks in the United States that overextended with subprime loans now share the brunt of the American decline with those that took on the loans, so will those Western European banks suffer.

So what will this mean? It means the likes of Brown, Merkel and Sarkozy will need to spend as much time and treasure rescuing their banks as American political leaders have spent on their own titans. It will also mean that Europe as a whole will shrink as a market for American goods. And, perhaps most dangerously, it will mean a major collapse of faith in free market principles and post-Cold War leaders. But let this be clear: Even if states outside the Eurozone are host to the looming implosions, Western banks, and therefore citizens to the west, will not be absolved. The dominoes will fall toward us if we're not careful, and not listening will no longer be an option.

Brian Till, one of the nation's youngest syndicated columnists, is a research fellow for the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington. He can be contacted at till@newamerica.net. To find out more about the author and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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