Nordea's Baltic Rim Economies

There is a joke about Mr. Zatlers, the President of Latvia, having huge discount for a call home from the Hell, compared to Obama and Putin ... because it was the local area call.

Well, Nordea is out with its latest "Baltic Rim Outlook" today, and is cautiously optimistic about the epicentre of Baltic depression economics:

The Latvian economy is stabilising, and we see a gradual recovery over the coming quarters. The main support is expected to come from the export sector. Increasing the uncertainty in the economy is the political instability, which is likely to intensify ahead of the parliamentary elections in October. The fiscal consolidation measures for the 2011 budget are likely to be postponed to after the elections.

While not as explicit as one may expect, Nordea notes that for Latvia the "main hope of a recovery from the export sector", but "forgets" to go deeper in details that are somehow overlooked. However, the Swedish counterpart SEB was a tiny bit more transparent on this last week, as, actually, the net exports and also current account, stripping out the pervert statistical aberrations, is deteriorating again since at least October 2009 ...

Danske Bank sees significant risks to recovery, and not only in Baltics, but in CEE.