Turkish Travails

While many emerging nations suffer from some of the conditions that ail Turkey, no other nation has them all. These problems include a huge budget deficit, the second highest current-account deficit among emerging market nations, huge externally denominated sovereign and corporate debt, profoundly high inflation, an inert central bank, virtually no international friends, and a large need for imported oil. Turkey is by far worst-in-class; fear of contagion is misplaced.