Latvia as the model country for successful austerity?

Попрошу по русски, товарищ!

Successful or not it – it depends on the definition and measurement of the success. The author here discusses only economic indicators, how about human costs of austerity? it would be interesting to see a much more in depth analysis, for example, changes in the rates of people ( especially children) living in poverty in Latvia.

Can you explain us, why do you risk with your professional standing, just to to publish propaganda. Come on? is this serious?
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The current Prime Minister of Latvia has been reelected twice during the austerity period – to me that is a sign of (perhaps grudging) accept of the necessity of these measures. Hudson and Sommers argue that these reelections can be mostly explained by ethnic politics. To me that rings hollow – even Harmony Center was willing to accept the IMF-EU package for a place in government, thus creating very broad consensus around the austerity measures.
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What a pack of lies! Do you honestly believe that Harmony Centre would be willing to accept IMF-EU package as it stands if they’d be in power position? No – the cause was a clever game of Public Relations, which led Vienotiba to get in parliament and on top of that to sabotage ZRP on exactly that – ethnic politics.
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Governments have fallen in all the other major crisis-ridden countries – Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece – but not here.
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So they have in France, UK, probably some other EU and a couple of Arab countries. So what? Do you want us to learn something from Russia’s strong government or Afganistan’s government? They all have wide support in their respective countries, don’t they?
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True, emigration seems to have been massive (for me the far by best coverage of this issue is here, by Mihails Hazans of University of Latvia) but it was also substantial before the crisis.
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(huh???????) Please get the facts right. The emigration substantially increased during the crisis. There was data even published in British press covering Eastern/Central Europe-UK migration trends.
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Then I think it is fair to say that people mainly emigrated because of the wage differences between Latvia and, say, the UK.
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No it is absolutely unsubstantiated statement. Probably you are familiar with the Maslov’s pyramid. Money and wage is just a figure. The real issue is behind absolutely disastrous governments led by Dombrovskis, who are disaster of managers, visionaries and statesmen. There was absolutely no thinking put behind linear cuts and tolerances. Ruined structures and systems left country in the state, that people didn’t feel safe and couldn’t satisfy their physiological needs. If I’d be economist I’d probably change my postcode out of embarrassed after making statement “people left just for another higher salary figure”.
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…….. budget deficit would have approached 20% of GDP in 2009 without some sort of consolidation, something that would have been impossible to finance, not least given the credit markets of late 2008.
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Credit markets??? I thought that that is exactly why IMF bailout was needed – Latvia could not access credit markets???
Although not mentioned, by you, but IMF/EU loan is a loan out of political aspiration. Look what is happening with PIGS and how far they can go without ditching life critical government services.
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• The recession was deep but rather short – around two years. Greece is in its 5th year of recession and counting.
And Greece is almost at the same point where Latvia is after GDP fall. So what?
• Growth has resumed; in fact Latvia is the fastest growing EU economy (5.1% for the second quarter of 2012 over the same quarter of 2011). OK, this is on a cheap background with an anemic Eurozone…..
We will see. Vienotibas Mascot – Vilks is not so sure about future anymore. So far – it is peanuts. Actually if there wouldn’t be such a favourable EU structural fund regime it would be more of an embarrassment.
• Public finances have been stabilized.
What does it mean?
• Financial markets find the austerity measures both credible and sufficient: Latvia is again investment grade and no longer rated ‘junk’ by any of the big rating agencies. The country has been able to tap financial markets at reasonably low interest rates and in general interest rates are lower than in e.g Greece and Spain.
UK, France haven’t the worst of the investment grades. With the recession over there and without creating zillions of desperate people, somehow they do manage. I do wonder why. Don’t you?
And Greece has some other interesting aspects like – write-off the debt and IMF loan interest rates. I presume in those circumstances the cost of capital market interest rates are irrelevant to the functions of the country.
And last, but not least – you don’t need to be a genius to write up a good balance sheet. Actually – less you have to put on there – easier it is to balance it out. But the human factor as usual in Latvia is discounted, which could lead to a very nice clean “consolidated” budget of zeros.

Vāji argumenti, drīzāk to nav, cerams kāds nākamajām paaudzēm kāds paskaidros, kādēļ zviedru dēļ bija mazajai Latvijai jānes šie upuri ar vājprātīgu monetāro politiku. Eirozonas šķelšanās ir tikai laika jautājums, jo pierādījās, ka internal devaluation ir muļķība. Raksta autors noklusē galveno – jautājumu par policy mix.

Te tam labs skaidrojums:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56BGJ5wtVhk

Cerība, tā sacīt :P

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‘Latvia as the model country for successful austerity’ – and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2013 will be award to …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q-3sLHgt7o

Kā tad – un no kurkulja un mamkām, ko vajag un kā :)

“austerity” – ugu :) – selective

Austerity as such was very healthy from one point – number of state agencies and employees was decreased swiftly. In our institution number of employees was decreased several times, more than one thousand people lost jobs. Latvia had too much of this before.
But there was a bad point – the remaining employees got their salaries cut per 30 – 80%. One can not find educated manager with fluent English and wish to work 12 hours per day and be responsible for millions of lats… with a salary of 240 LVL on hand. Many good specialists have left state / municipal institutions.

not for a successful one, sorry.