Friday, June 23, 2006

Another Polish finance minister bites the dust - update


To lose one finance minister is a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness (photo: Gilowska with Prime Minister Marcinkiewicz as he puts in the knife).

Zyta Gilowska became the second finance minister to be thrown out of the Polish government in six months. The first, Teresa Lubinska was just hopeless, really. Zyta has been given the boot because of allegations that she covered up contacts she had with communist era secret services.

Markets wobbled all over the place today, especially the currency markets. The zloty is trading as I write to the Euro at 3.12…this morning it was 3.01.

See more of that story here and here.

Update: Who is the mysterious 'Ula', a friend of Zyta Gilowska, whose husband was in the secret services and is the author of the allegations against the now former finance minister? It now appears that Gilowska has been set up by political opponents. And who is the new finance minister, Pawel Wojciechowski? Jaroslaw Kaczynski, for one, hasn't a clue.

For more on this see Polish Outlook here and then here.

4 comments:

michael farris said...

Worst post-communist Polish government ever. What more can be said?

I think that PiS is a lot like George W Bush, almost everyone who alligns with him comes to regret it bitterly (see Blair, Tony).

beatroot said...

It's the opposite of the midas touch...everything they touch turns to a rather nasty smelling brown substance.

beatroot said...

Samoobrona need an economically literate person...

Anonymous said...

Beetroot states:

"Markets wobbled all over the place today, especially the currency markets. The zloty is trading as I write to the Euro at 3.12…this morning it was 3.01."

Beatroot, have you been drinking Irish whiskey when you made this statement? You might qualify to be a Finance Minister for PO or SLD with such information. The Euro never came anywhere near either 3.12 or 3.01 zloty for a very long time. Please go to www.oanda.com (a nice source) and do a historical query for the Euro versus the Polish Zloty, from June 20 to June 26, based on the Interbank rates. You will see the following rates (1 EUR = X PLN):

June 20: 1 EUR = 4.068840 PLN
June 21: 1 EUR = 4.074820 PLN
June 22: 1 EUR = 4.079870 PLN
June 23: 1 EUR = 4.083860 PLN
June 24: 1 EUR = 4.105770 PLN
June 25: 1 EUR = 4.127250 PLN
June 26: 1 EUR = 4.127550 PLN

As of June 23 (the demise of Gilowska) up until today, the Polish zloty only gained 4 groszy per EURO...economically immaterial and goes to show her importance.