October 21, 2007 (LPAC)--The housing boom in the former U.S.S.R., which has largely been financed with foreign capital, is, like housing markets worldwide, blowing up, according to the London Telegraph's notorious Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Home prices in Riga, Latvia, rose a staggering 61 percent in the 12 months ended in March, making houses in Riga more expensive than houses in Berlin, but prices are now falling, down nearly 5 percent over May and June, and more since. In Kazakhstan, where mortgage credit expanded 100 percent in a year, the $40 billion bubble has popped, with homes in some quarters of Almaty, the nation's largest city, falling 20 percent over the last three months. The share prices of six of the top Kazakhstan lenders halved between July and early October, and some banks are experiencing runs. While the sums involved pale in comparison to the size of the U.S. mortgage market, the effects on the people of those nations is every bit as serious, and the welfare of the population is the metric by which such crises should be measured.