Archive for July, 2011
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Guest column, Return of the political economy
Worrying about foreign currency open positions, retail deposits, TurkStat, Turkish politics and the like, a whole weekend passed, and I almost forgot the usual weekly guest column by Taylan Bilgic, which was also published in the Hurriyet Daily News on Friday. Here it is, with my comments right below the column. [The post-global-crisis, economic [...]
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Turkish FX retail deposits
I am starting with where I left off at the last post, i.e. foreign currency deposits. Foreign currency deposits have in the past often acted as a buffer against lira depreciation, with domestics selling FX when lira starts to lose value. So I have been wondering what happened in the latest b0ut of last lira [...]
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Turkish corporate sector open positions
In Turkish, we have this great saying “the good human drops upon his word”- you say this when the person walks in just as you are speaking about him/her. Since corporate sector open positions have been on the agenda for a while, thanks to Central Bank Governor Erdem Basci’s infamous speech last Friday in Denizli, [...]
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Confidential data in Turkish trade figures
There isn’t much new in the June trade balance figures, which were released yesterday: Imports are continuing to grow more than exports… …while a small consolation coming from monthly export growth surpassing imports, after the usual seasonality and working-day adjustment of course… …and VAT on imports continuing to be an inaccurate predictor of imports But [...]
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Yet another Turkish political bump
The Chief of Staff and commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force resigned (asked to be retired) this evening before the annual High Military Tribunal. The likely reason for the resignation is disagreement over the fate of 145 military personnel, including 40 generals, under arrest, awaiting trial, for having attempted a coup. The generals [...]
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Central Bank of Turkey’s meeting with bank economists: “We love the BRSA!”
That statement is actually from Erdem Basci, when he was underlining how the banking regulator’s measures as well as the fiscal stance have been helpful to their policies during his monthly meeting with economists today. That love is apparent throughout the presentation, as several graphs are marked with the time of BRSA’s June policies, showing [...]
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Turkish crisis control & live-blogging from Inflation Report
Two key days for Turkey to see if officials will be doing crisis control. First, we have the Inflation Report in a a few minutes- I will do (almost) live-blogging Governor Basci’s presentation below. I am saying almost because I am live-blogging in front of the TV; I am not in Ankara, and let me [...]
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Latest Turkish real sector data
The lira is below 1.70 again, thanks to PM Erdogan’s assurances today (according to the press), so it is time to talk about Monday’s July real sector confidence and capacity utilization figures, which come from the same survey: Pretty good figures, precisely because they are not that good:) While July capacity utilization rate, or CUR, [...]
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More government statements
Contiuing on with the government statements post from yesterday, PM Erdogan said today that Turkey would not be affected by a European crisis. In fact, he underlined that “the crisis would not even pass tangent to Turkey this time around”. To recall, when he said the global crisis would pass tangent to Turkey back in [...]
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What to make of the Turkish government’s statements?
Reader economopoulos asks at the comments of the addendum to this week’s Hurriyet / Roubini column: Do you think the recent comments by the government officials might be part of a ‘soft-landing’ strategy? To answer this question, let me start by posing some questions that Atilla Yesilada asks at his daily yesterday. The questions are [...]
