Latvia

I know two things about Latvia, Arturs Irbe is the goalie of its Olympic hockey team and their economy and market appears to be having some problems.

I wrote about Latvia's problems on Feb 23 just as the stock market was getting ready to rollover. Yesterday Bloomberg ran an article noting that the currency, the lat, had fallen to an all time low against the euro because of consumer debt and current account issues.

The same article said that the central bank, the Latvijas Banka, may have to start buying lats to defend the currency.

In the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago I said their might be a dust up in Latvia, the Bloomberg article quoted a Bear Stearns trader as saying ``the alarm bells are ringing, a crisis is looming.''

There are a couple of reasons to bring this up. If this does become a crisis and if it dominoes to other countries (S&P says Lithuania faces contagion risk here), it could be easier to digest if you see it coming now before MSM really, if ever, delves into it.

If there is a crisis but it does not domino it could be worthwhile to follow the currency (ticker USDLVL=X on Yahoo) and the stock market (click through the above chart to the OMX-Riga website) and study movement in these markets as they happen because chances are something similar will happen to a country you care about at some point but since you don't have any skin in the Latvian game you can follow and learn without any emotion, at least that is what I am doing.