Thursday, February 26, 2015

The Ukraine's Economic Weaknesses Are Being Brutally Exposed



The Economist: Ukraine’s economy: The day of reckoning

The West’s inadequate support for Ukraine is being brutally exposed

IT MAY go down as one of the least effective bail-outs the world has ever seen. Not Greece’s, but Ukraine’s. Just two weeks ago Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), promised Ukraine $40 billion over four years—an impressive-sounding sum for a country whose GDP may soon shrink to $70 billion. Since then, however, Ukraine’s economic crisis has got much worse. The currency has hit new lows: a dollar now buys around 30 hryvnia (see chart). This week the central bank instituted new currency controls in a fruitless attempt to slow its plunge. Government bonds are trading at 40 cents on the dollar.


WNU Editor: A good summary.

3 comments:

Jay Farquharson said...

WNU Editor,

Funny thing is, it's a much sweeter deal than anything offered Greece,

And Greece has the potential of actually paying the money back.

oldfatslow said...

The economy of Eastern
Ukraine has to be in
much worse shape. It
can only be surviving
because the big, bad
bear is funding it.
How many billions is
that costing Moscow
one wonders......

ofs

War News Updates Editor said...

Good point OFS. Eastern Ukraine's economy has been completely destroyed.