{"id":36556,"date":"2018-08-08T07:43:56","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T12:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36556"},"modified":"2018-08-08T07:43:56","modified_gmt":"2018-08-08T12:43:56","slug":"turkish-banks-scramble-to-stave-off-debt-crisis-as-lira-plummets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36556","title":{"rendered":"Turkish Banks Scramble to Stave Off Debt Crisis, as Lira Plummets"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2018\/08\/07\/turkish-banks-scramble-to-stave-off-debt-crisis-as-lira-plummets\/\">Turkish Banks Scramble to Stave Off Debt Crisis, as Lira Plummets<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>Too little, too late?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Desperation is rising in Turkey\u2019s banking sector following months of escalating political and financial instability. Benchmark interest rates have been hiked 10 percentage points so far this year to over 17%, making it much more expensive for companies and families to service their debt. But even that hasn\u2019t stopped the Turkish Lira from plunging almost 25% since March.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTurkey is going through its first currency crisis of the floating era,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rodrikdani\/status\/1026496277238960128\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">explained<\/a>Dani Rodik, a Turkish economist and professor at Harvard University. \u201cAll the previous ones were when the rate was fixed or managed, and hence unfolded much more quickly. This one is stretched over time, and the government prefers to ignore it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The latest spark of concern was the U.S. government\u2019s decision at the weekend to declare sanctions against two Turkish cabinet ministers over the detention of an American pastor. The Trump administration said it was also reviewing Turkey\u2019s duty-free access to the U.S. market, which could affect $1.7 billion of Turkish exports. Bloomberg reported that the US has prepared a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2018-08-01\/u-s-said-to-prepare-list-of-turkey-economic-sanctions-targets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-trackable=\"link\">broader list<\/a> of Turkish entities and individuals that could be subject to further sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday the Lira <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hurriyetdailynews.com\/turkish-lira-recuperates-losses-after-turkey-us-meeting-report-135523\">shed 5.5%<\/a> of its value to a record low of 5.46 against the dollar, before recovering slightly following intervention from the Bank of Turkey. The central bank <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2018-08-06\/turkey-changes-reserve-rules-to-boost-banks-dollar-liquidity\">changed<\/a> its rules to loosen the upper limit of banks\u2019 reserve requirements in a desperate bid to support the crumbling currency. The bank announced it was reducing the maximum amount of foreign currency lenders can park at the regulator as part of their required reserves.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Turkish Banks Scramble to Stave Off Debt Crisis, as Lira Plummets Too little, too late? Desperation is rising in Turkey\u2019s banking sector following months of escalating political and financial instability. Benchmark interest rates have been hiked 10 percentage points so far this year to over 17%, making it much more expensive for companies and families [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[63,21189,1997,20408,818,8280,843,4255],"class_list":["post-36556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-banks","tag-don-quinones","tag-economic-sanctions","tag-lira","tag-turkey","tag-turkish-lira","tag-us-government","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36557,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36556\/revisions\/36557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}