The black hole called Hungary - Notes on exceptionalism VI.

After more than a week of frantic selectionary work (vetting a lá Hongrois) a new candidate for the position of the prime minister emerged. The twists and turns of last week were certainly fascinating for observers and outsiders and I wouldn't even astonished to attend once a theater play or a movie using the story as a basis. (Conmedy or tragedy, I don't really know.) But as the sun rose to it's dull and boring daily road to be accomplished, the scene was taken over by our "experts" and "analysts" conveying the judgement of the markets on the events. Many of them was eagerly and happily sharing with us their wisdom and it is conceivable that they hadn't omitted the effect of the recent political events on the exchange rate of the forint. And once again their majority saw clear and undoubtable signs of a strong causal realtionship. The fall of the forint againts euro at dawn was a message, expressing negative expectations and so on. And once again the story was completely dead half an hour later. The zloty, tha Czech koruna similarly fell even at dawn.

Not only the incompetence of these guys, perceivedly having the necessary qualifications for and being entitled to make more money with the use of that of others is a sad picture but their whole construction of the world so nicely expressed by these small episodes. Even though the resignation of a prime minister, the deterioration of the process of finding a new candidate to a farce and a stalemate at the weekend, when the early elections seemed inevitable was not able to influence the markets, they are sticking to the idea that Hungary has its own significance. As the once land of promise in ECE and now the sick man of the region, the adhorring example to where incompetence could lead. Either as the best or as the worst in the region, but Hungary stands out. They are clearly not disturbed by the fact that this is not the case. Their beloved and adored markets are making not much difference and as long as the most important concern on those markets is whether to buy US bonds or not, it will remain so.