[Marxism] Poles Lose in Currency-Exchange Gamble

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/14/AR2009031400633.html
Poles Lose in Currency-Exchange Gamble
Once Trendy, Loans In Swiss Francs Now a Nightmare

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 15, 2009; A01

WARSAW -- Like many of its formerly communist neighbors in Eastern 
Europe, Poland has turned into a country of capitalist gamblers.

In recent years, as their economy boomed, millions of Poles became 
foreign-currency speculators, buying property, cars and consumer goods 
with loans denominated in low-interest Swiss francs. As the Polish 
currency, the zloty, soared in value, most borrowers found it cheaper to 
pay off their debts in Swiss money, even though few had ever been to 
Switzerland or knew what a franc looked like.

Since August, however, the zloty has unexpectedly collapsed, losing 
nearly half its value against the Swiss franc. About two-thirds of all 
Polish mortgage holders now face skyrocketing payments. If the zloty 
continues to tumble, analysts fear the problem could lead to a wave of 
defaults in the region, dealing a major setback to Europe's already 
weakened banking system.

"Just like the subprime mortgages were a wonderful idea in the United 
States as long as house prices kept rising, so it was with the 
Swiss-franc loans here," said Witold M. Orlowski, a former adviser to 
the Polish president and now chief economist for PricewaterhouseCoopers 
in Warsaw. "It was seen as a win-win game. There were warnings, but 
basically people ignored them."

Currency gambling has backfired in several other countries in Eastern 
and Central Europe. In Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, a majority of 
mortgages and other consumer loans were taken out in Swiss francs, 
euros, even Japanese yen -- all of which offered substantially lower 
interest rates than the Eastern European currencies.

The borrowing binge rested on the assumption that the Hungarian forint, 
Romanian leu and Ukrainian hryvnia would keep rising in value, or at 
least remain stable. But since last summer, those currencies have crashed.

Moody's credit-rating agency warned last month that the region's 
financial system was vulnerable to defaults on foreign-currency loans 
and that the problem could devastate the balance sheets of Western 
European banks operating in the region.

German, Austrian and Italian banks dominate finance in Eastern Europe. 
U.S. banks are less exposed, but a few, including Citibank and General 
Electric's Money Bank, have a substantial market share.

In Poland, people owing money in Swiss francs have seen their monthly 
payments rise by 50 percent or more since last summer. Few have 
defaulted. But analysts predict the number of bad debts will jump if the 
zloty remains weak much longer.

Marzena Rudkiewicz, 54, a Warsaw dentist, took an extra job this month 
at a government hospital fitting false teeth for pensioners, saying 
payments on a mortgage she took out to buy an apartment for her son in 
2005 have ballooned by more than half. The mortgage is denominated in 
Swiss francs, but she is paid in zlotys and has to exchange the weak 
Polish currency to pay off the debt.

"I've had to change my life because I'm stuck with this loan," she said. 
"It's too painful to think about."

Rudkiewicz's husband, Jakub, an industrial designer, took out a 
Swiss-franc loan four years ago so his small firm could buy its own 
office space. At the time, his monthly payment was 1,600 zlotys. Now 
it's 2,400, at a time when he can least afford it; business has slowed 
since the onset of the global financial crisis last fall.
Looming Troubles

Compared with some of its neighbors, Poland's overall economy is 
actually in good shape. Growth tailed off late last year, but analysts 
have not forecast a recession for 2009. Public finances are stable, and 
many banks are still reporting profits.

Government officials said they worry Poland is being unfairly lumped 
together with the region's economic basket cases, such as Latvia, 
Ukraine and Hungary. All three countries have required bailouts by the 
International Monetary Fund.

"You try to differentiate yourself and explain what problems exist in 
your own country and which problems do not," said Dominik Radziwill, a 
deputy finance minister. "Just because we only recently joined the 
European Union doesn't mean we have a bigger potential to default."

But the Polish economy is facing trouble on several other fronts.

After the country joined the bloc in 2004, it had a chance to move 
quickly to replace the zloty with the euro. But as the zloty 
appreciated, lawmakers put off adopting the new currency.

Today, Polish officials are kicking themselves. Two countries in the 
region that did adopt the euro -- Slovakia and Slovenia -- have been 
sheltered from the financial woes affecting the region.

After Poland was admitted to the European Union, more than 1 million 
Poles moved abroad to seek work, particularly in Britain, Ireland and 
Sweden. Now that economies in those countries are swooning, many of the 
expatriates are returning home -- just as the jobless rate in Poland is 
rising for the first time in years.

Leszek Czarnecki, a billionaire developer and banker who became Poland's 
wealthiest investor during its go-go years, said nobody knows how things 
will turn out.

In an interview, Czarnecki called Poland's economy "fundamentally sound" 
but warned that the government's biggest challenge will be to stabilize 
the zloty. If it does, he said, the economy could grow by 2.5 percent 
this year -- a major accomplishment in the face of a global recession.

But if the zloty continues to plummet, he said, the economy could 
contract by as much as 5 to 7 percent. "It might be totally crushed, an 
unbelievable crisis," he said.

Czarnecki is the chief investor in Getin Holding, a banking company that 
specialized in Swiss franc loans. He said that his banks have not 
experienced a rise in defaults and that Getin remains highly profitable. 
But he acknowledged that, in hindsight, the foreign-currency strategy 
was "a mistake."

Czarnecki blamed the problem largely on credit-rating agencies and 
foreign banks, which he said treated the loans as low risk and 
encouraged them for years. Now, he said, those same institutions are 
telling investors to pull their money out of Eastern Europe.

"We believed that well-dressed, perfectly well-spoken bankers -- some 
people call them 'bangsters' -- from Wall Street and London City really 
knew what they were talking about," he said.
Dashed Dreams

The foreign-currency crunch has shaken other pillars of the Polish 
economy. Mortgage lending has dried up, depressing the real-estate 
market. One-third of construction jobs have been lost since last year.

Grandiose dreams have been dashed. Two years ago, Czarnecki unveiled 
plans to build Sky Tower, an 846-foot-tall skyscraper in Wroclaw, 
Poland's fourth-biggest city. The building would have been the country's 
tallest, but he has had to shrink it by 20 percent and postpone 
construction.

The story is similar in downtown Warsaw. Until last fall, the capital 
was jammed with construction cranes. Today, all but a handful of 
projects have been canceled or put on hold.

One of the few buildings still under construction is a 56-story luxury 
apartment tower on Gold Street, in the city center. Designed by the 
renowned U.S. architect Daniel Libeskind, it was intended to cater to 
Warsaw's newly rich, with many residences priced at more than $1 million.

But the developer, Orco Property Group, has been able to sell only about 
40 percent of the units. "It's definitely slowed down," said Alicja 
Kosciesza, the marketing director.

As in the United States, angry Poles are blaming the banks for excessive 
lending. Until banks tightened credit last fall, no-money-down loans 
valued at 120 percent of collateral were common. Borrowers could sign up 
for mortgages lasting 75 years.

"Banks started this huge competition for customers, lowering all the 
conditions and requirements to make loans more accessible," said 
Aleksandra Natalli-Swiat, an opposition lawmaker.

In 2006, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority recommended that 
banks limit the size of Swiss-franc loans to 80 percent of the maximum 
it would otherwise lend a customer.

The recommendation was not binding, but most banks observed it, said 
Andrzej Stopczynski, the authority's managing director for banking 
supervision. If regulators hadn't intervened, he added, today's problems 
would be far worse.

Most banks stopped offering foreign-currency loans last fall after the 
zloty began to plunge. But about 60 to 70 percent of existing mortgages 
in Poland are still denominated in Swiss francs, Stopczynski said.

Despite the fall in the zloty, many Poles remain convinced that 
speculating in Swiss francs can be a good deal.

Rafal Lyczek, a 31-year-old economist from Poznan, converted his 
mortgage from zlotys to Swiss francs last May, in a terrible bit of 
timing. His payments have almost doubled since then. "I didn't think the 
zloty could weaken so quickly," he said.

Lyczek has started a Web site, dubbed "Buy a Franc" in Polish, designed 
to help people trade in the foreign-exchange market themselves instead 
of paying high commissions to banks.

But he said he has no regrets about borrowing in Swiss francs in the 
first place. He thinks the zloty is undervalued and will make a comeback.

"If I gave in now, it means I'd be giving my money back to the 
speculators and that I will have lost," he said.

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