For the third time this year, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has depreciated the Egyptian pound against the dollar in a foreign exchange auction in mid-October, taking the currency's decline for the year to 9.8%. The pound fell 1.3%(10 piasters) to 7.93 per dollar sell side and 7.88 buy side according to a report by the state-owned Middle East News Agency, which announced that the CBE offered $40m at a regular dollar sale to local lenders. Can the country pick its way out of the blues?

The make-up of shareholders in Turkey’s banking segment has always been a touchstone of wider market change. The country has always been a swing market and the banking system has remained vulnerable, even with an improved capital base, as it has an ultra-high dependency on foreign funding of lending. That vulnerability has resulted in some significant changes in the investment in the country’s banking segment by foreign financial firms who have shown little stickiness in the country when the going gets tougher.

A survey of 947 respondents in Turkey by Washington think tank PewCentre Research suggests Turks are dissatisfied with the direction of their country. Rising prices, crime and inequality are concerns. Moreover after years of quasi-Islamic rule that has been antipathetic to the military; survey respondents say the military is the only group with a “good influence on the country”. Opinions of the police, national government, religious leaders and the courts are mixed, while views of the media tilt to the negative. More pertinently perhaps, 52% of Turks think their children will be worse off financially in the future. The findings come as voters are scheduled to revisit national government elections on November 1st after the AKP party failed to form a coalition government in June. The upcoming elections will be closely watched, both as a bellwether of wider change in the eastern Mediterranean and as an indicator of the near term prospects for a lynchpin emerging market.