After Cyprus, Is Slovenia Next Euro Zone Domino?
April 7th, 2013Via: Reuters:
Successive Slovenian governments have refused to privatize the country’s banks, which made disastrous loans to politically connected business interests and now threaten to drag the country center stage in the euro zone debt crisis.
A span of unfinished apartment blocks in the Siska complex on the outskirts of Ljubljana is emblematic of the former Yugoslav republic’s woes, just as many such ghost neighborhoods in Europe’s debt-choked south stand testament to the depth of the broader continent’s economic problems.
The rows of buildings, housing 833 flats in all, stand mostly empty, casualties of a property boom turned bust and a subsequent recession. Alongside, Vegrad, a company once led by a well-placed politician, also planned to build a hotel, but got no further than digging an enormous hole. An apt symbol, as Slovenia comes under growing pressure to seek a bailout to fill a financial hole, just as Cyprus did last month.
The countries are different in many ways, but they have at least two things in common: like Cyprus, Slovenia needs to recapitalize its biggest banks, and it does not have the money to do so.
