Bloomberg.com: East Europe Crisis ‘Manageable,’ EBRD’s Berglof Says - by Agnes Lovas

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East Europe Crisis ‘Manageable,’ EBRD’s Berglof Says - by Agnes Lovas

Eastern Europe’s financial crisis is “manageable” so long as western banks continue lending to their units in the region, said European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Chief Economist Erik Berglof. Emerging European nations are struggling to refinance short- term debt as the global crisis that has left banks with more than $2 trillion in losses and writedowns cuts off credit and investment and plunges most of the region into a recession. “The key is continued support from banks in Western Europe to their subsidiaries in the east,” Berglof said in an interview yesterday in London. “As long as those flows continue, that’s a very large part of the solution to the problem. The situation is manageable but we must make sure that it is being managed.”