“President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has been spending, too, subsidizing big-ticket infrastructure projects,” according to the Times. “All that money owed in other currencies makes the collapse of the Turkish lira particularly problematic. The currency has been sinking steadily for years, resulting in a persistently high rate of inflation, but the sell-off turned into a rout after Mr. Erdogan was re-elected in June and given broad new powers that strengthened his control over the nation.”
Some analysts have recently trimmed Turkey’s economic growth estimates. South Africa is another emerging markets offender as highlighted by a year-to-date decline of almost 27% for the iShares MSCI South Africa ETF (NYSEArca: EZA).
“South Africa’s currency, the rand, is down by roughly 18 percent this year, and second-quarter data this month showed that South Africa was already in a recession. That further complicates matters, as the cure for the weak rand — higher interest rates from the central bank — could make the downturn even worse,” according to the Times.
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