Taunter Media

In early March I attended an investors’ dinner.  We had some steaks and sat around a room talking about what a disaster the market was.  The green shoots in the market – bullshit.  Maybe – maybe – when the market hit 500 it would be time to buy.  Maybe, but it could be years.

I thought people were being overly pessimistic.  Just one more push – let Eastern Europe melt down, let Austria or Italy need a European Central Bank bailout, let Citi go into receivership, let people get seriously scared – and it would be time to jump in.

I don’t think the market has gone down since.

However, Eastern Europe is still a disaster area.  When I was in Europe I visited a farm in central Denmark.  Sitting around the kitchen of farmhouse when a guy who should have been in college knocks on the door.  The owner tells him he’ll be out in a few minutes, excuses himself, and walks outside.  Comes back in a minute later.  Apologizes for the interruption; the guy at the door was a Lithuanian looking for work, and about fifteen or twenty show up every day, with about that many calling on the phone.  Until this year he made do with the flotsam of the European workforce – Spaniards and Frenchmen so down on their luck that they were willing to pick peas fourteen hours a day.  Now he gets professionals from all over Eastern Europe – lawyers, a doctor, seemingly every cop in the Czech Republic – banging on his door.  It’s The Grapes of Wrath, minus the massive dust storm.

Now we hear that Latvia is under strain:

Latvia’s financial crisis escalated after a government auction to sell 50 million lats ($100.8 million) of short-term debt failed to attract any bidders, adding more pressure on the government to devalue its currency.

The government, of course, is trying to put on a brave face:

Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis avoided questions about a devaluation in an interview on CNBC after European markets closed, but said the country needs to reach a quick agreement with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to secure the second portion of its €7.5 billion ($10.7 billion) loan, granted in December in the aftermath of a previous failed auction and pressure on the lat.

When does the fact that the economy is down 18% kick in?

Strange times.  We have had a monster equity market rally.  But what has really changed since January?

UPDATE – BREAKING NEWS

No sooner did I write this than, half a world away, the Latvian population took matters into its own hands.  After listening to one too many Spice Girls songs, the women of Latvia decided to have a Blonde Parade to channel improve the country’s mood.

“I am beautiful, but I’m not dumb,” Ilone Zigure told the news agency AFP. The student added that she hopes that those of her countrymen who are depressed about the economic crisis will find her “positive energy” contagious.

At the least it should reinvigorate the Baltic bachelor party industry.

I am, however, a bit suspicious that although the parade claimed 500 participants, the Spiegel photographs seem to involve the same seven or eight women from different angles.  It cannot be because the photographer was in a rush…