Enquiries
Europe on the Brink of Currency Crisis Meltdown
By: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard / Telegraph.co.uk / October 27, 2008
"The financial crisis spreading like wildfire across the former Soviet bloc threatens to set off a second and more dangerous banking crisis in Western Europe, tipping the whole Continent into a fully-fledged economic slump.
"Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe's monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.
"'This is the biggest currency crisis the world has ever seen,' said Neil Mellor, a strategist at Bank of New York Mellon.
"Experts fear the mayhem may soon trigger a chain reaction within the eurozone itself. The risk is a surge in capital flight from Austria-the country, as it happens, that set off the global banking collapse of May 1931 when Credit-Anstalt went down-and from a string of Club Med countries that rely on foreign funding to cover huge current account deficits."
