Andrejs Terentjevs, F64.
Mr. Latkovskis had apportioned blame even before he read the IMF paper
Based on this Working Paper from the IMF , which tries to disentangle whether the credit booms and their fallout in the eastern new member states of the EU were unavoidable or due to bad policy, Bens Latkovskis, writing in Neatkarīgā on 21 July 2010 , comes to the conclusion that Bank of Latvia is to blame in the case of Latvia. It seems that this was picked up by much else of the media but here I must quite frankly ask: Did anyone else read the IMF paper or did they just report Mr. Latkovskis’ “findings”? I bet the latter.
But interesting – when I read the very same IMF report I found general evidence of blame to be put on the banks, on (lack of) supervision and, of course, on the main culprit here, fiscal policy. But not on the central bank – but let me in all fairness apportion some blame on them, too, as I move along.