Should I go for the Mandy
Rice-Davies moment? Yeah, what the hell:
Well they would, wouldn't they?
From ZeroHedge:
Over the year, Deutsche Bank has been accused - and found
guilty - of doing many illegal things (and paid handsomely for it, both
in terms of penalties as well as sacked CEOs), but what happened
yesterday was new.
As we observed yesterday morning, as
part of his latest attack on currency speculators, Erdogan compared FX
traders to terrorists, saying that "terrorists with dollars and with
weapons have no difference." Furthermore, on Thursday the government
friendly daily Yeni Safak reported that Deutsche Bank and other German
institutions were attempting “economic terror” against Turkey by recalling loans to companies before their their due dates.
The German lender was not happy, and on Friday Deutsche Bank’s Turkish unit rejected claims
that it’s plotting to undermine the economy, and said it’s
“unacceptable” for the lender’s name to be associated with terrorism.
“Claims in the story about calling loans before their
maturity and conducting operations in coordination with other
institutions are totally groundless,” the bank’s Istanbul-based business
said in an e-mailed statement Friday quoted by Bloomberg.
Like many other failing
regimes, most notably Venezuela, Erdogan and his aides often invoke a
conspiracy against Turkey by outside powers when the lira declines,
"saying other nations are jealous of the country’s economic growth under
his leadership." On Thursday, Erdogan accused Turkey’s enemies of
speculating in the lira and again called on Turks to “thwart these
games” by selling their holdings in other currencies.
Meanwhile, the one thing that could prop up the crashing
currency, a rate hike, has been virtually proihibted by Erdogan who has
warned that any such action by the central bank will be rejected by his
administration. Erdogan is hoping to boost the lagging economy with
cheap loans, however in the process it has sent the currency plunging.
Thursday was not the first time that Deutsche Bank has been
singled out by the Turkish press. In January 2014, the German lender
denied local reports that it deliberately drove down shares of a Turkish
state-run lender that had been implicated in a corruption scandal.
Deutsche Bank said most of the shares it processed in that episode were
owned by its clients, and it wasn’t trading sufficient volumes to affect
the company’s share price. More recently, the Frankfurt-based
institution figured in a different way in government rhetoric.
In an amusing interlude, last September,
when Deutsche Bank's shares were plunging, amid capital concerns, Yigit
Bulut, a chief adviser to Erdogan, said Turkey should consider buying
Deutsche Bank....MORE
