While reading Croatian newspapers on the beach in beautiful Istria, I see that even their "high officials" are burdened by the question of whether Croatia can stand up to the new crisis?
Of course, the target is a possible new global economic crisis, like the one in 2008, when the current coalition ruling in Zagreb was in opposition. Interestingly, today's Croatian Minister of Finance, Zdravko Marić, is cautious in answering the question, so he gives an ambivalent answer: "In some things we are far better and more stable than in 2008, but in many things we are not at all." Even when making other statements, he adheres to the old rule that the finance minister should be Babaroga in every government and not get stuck, which seems unusual to us from Serbia.
Marić, for example, decisively says that he does not like self-praise for "record successes" because after such results, statistically weaker ones always come, so people wonder what the ministers are doing.
In an extensive article devoted to the global fear of the impact of a new economic crisis, Zagreb's Jutarnji list quotes the former chief economist of the IMF, Olivier Blanchard, who says that, if interest rates are so low, monetary policy cannot be the main instrument in the fight against recession, as it was past decades, but power is returning to the hands of financial policy makers. That is, he puts the responsibility for opposing the possible onslaught of a new crisis primarily on the ministers of finance.
True, Croatia's problem with the fear of crisis is different from that in Serbia and in many other countries because that country entered the process of joining the Eurozone, that is, it entered the so-called ERM 2, which is a mandatory stop on the kuna's eventual path to the euro. Simply put, in addition to the fact that it is already a member of the EU, this last circumstance further narrows the space for some autonomous economic policy, especially the policy of the exchange rate, which has already been fixed at a fixed level for almost a decade, which, in the opinion of some experts, prevents any industrialization of Croatia.
So, again simplified, as the EU will be, so will be Croatia - only slightly worse. Given that tourism and exports are the first to suffer in a crisis. This is a principled answer, and concretely, the first to come under attack in Croatia are numerous real estate developers, who have excessive expectations, according to economic observers.
It seems to me that the rush to build new business and residential buildings is one of the similarities in the economic trends of Croatia and Serbia. In our country too, there is too much faith in the long-term tendency of rents for commercial and retail space in Belgrade and Novi Sad. And those investments are equally risky both for investors and for the banks that lend them. Especially when there is a wave of crisis of international proportions. But what can be done there, renting, not production, these are obviously obsessions that are very widespread in Croatia and Serbia.
This whole story about the readiness for a possible new crisis, by the way, falls at a time when the economic picture of Europe seems quite good. In the European Union, no country has an excessive budget deficit, the indebtedness of the countries is falling - everyone is reducing public debt, unemployment is low, and the industry is somewhere at last year's level or slightly lower (despite China's slowdown, US trade burdens, Brexit uncertainties, etc.).
So why are fears of a new large-scale economic crisis persistently renewed. Because the world is mostly ruled by masters of political crises. We will see how far they are ready to go, at the cost of new life problems for the largest number of people.
(novimagazin.rs)
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