Economies on the Edge

Here’s another country on the global recession’s front line: Botswana, hailed as the longest continuous multi-party democracy in Africa. Botswana is classified by some economists as an “upper middle-income” country, but the wealth is very unevenly spread, so – according to DFID – 49 per cent of the population lives on less than $2 a…

Obscene would be putting it too strongly, but it did seem odd talking about dead African children amid the gilded Louis XIV interiors of Lancaster House last week. One of London’s finest townhouses, just across the road from Buckingham Palace, this is where Rhodesia’s independence from Britain was signed in 1979.

George Soros in today’s FT makes similar points to those raised in my posts on Africa (Zambia here and Tanzania coming later today), Latvia and Hungary about the need “to protect the periphery countries from a storm created in the developed world… the periphery countries will suffer even more than those at the centre”.

Zambia is reckoned to be the 13th poorest country in the world. Sixty-four per cent of the people live in poverty. More than one in six children die before their fifth birthday, and if you live to the age of 42 you are doing better than average. Britain is the largest bilateral donor to Zambia,…

Europe seems to be moving into gear on the “Eastern Question” – how to stop the financial crisis in Latvia and Hungary from coming back to haunt us. EU finance ministers, meeting in Brussels ahead of a G20 summit in Sussex this weekend, say they want to double the size of IMF funds to $500bn (£362bn).…

An extended version of my interview with incoming Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis:

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY – In Hungary, the post-Communist boom has turned to bust. And many Hungarians feel the rest of Europe is so preoccupied with its own problems that it simply can’t see how bad things are here. The country’s prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany warned this week about a new “Iron Curtain” descending across the continent, dividing rich…

RIGA, LATVIA – A viewer who happens to be a banker has texted a joke to me here in freezing Latvia – the former “Baltic Tiger” which has lost its roar. “What is the capital of Latvia?” the joke goes. The answer? “About two dollars.” I’m not sure the joke would go down well with…

NEAR JELGAVA, LATVIA – Janis Vitins strides across his farmyard, his camouflaged parka coat buttoned up tight because it is minus four degrees out here, though with the wind it feels like minus eight. I say “his farmyard”, and it is true that his cat is snuggled up in the barn and his dog still…

RIGA, LATVIA – I am sitting in the Latvian parliament in downtown Riga, waiting for the new Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis to show up for an interview. And the words of a local economist are ringing in my ears. “Anyone who wants to run this country must have a death wish,” he told me on the…

TATARSZENTGYORGY, HUNGARY – I am standing in a graveyard in central Hungary, surrounded by hundreds of Roma. They are said to be Europe’s most persecuted minority, and today they feel it. For they have gathered to mourn at the freshly dug graveside of a father and his son, burned alive in what is believed to…