| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Checking exchange rates in
Ankara: the crisis has created
insecurity among Turks |
Turkish banks are in what must be the closest thing to hell
for financial institutions.
The December 1999 stand-by agreement with the IMF has put an end
to wild west banking where everyone made pots of money by lending
to the state treasury at surrealistic interest rates, many private
banks were robbed by their shareholders and state banks served as
the politicians' private purse. The Turks must be the only people
in the world who have a proverb endorsing corruption. Devletin mali
deniz, yemeyen domuz, it runs - "the wealth of the state is as big
as the sea and he who does not drink from it is a pig."
For all practical purposes banking was unsupervised. Corrupt
ministers quashed efforts by the regulatory body to impose
discipline and compliance with laws. In 1994 the government
guaranteed all deposits in the...
