Latvian lessons

摘要

It is hard to believe, walking past gleaming mansions along the sand dunes of Jurmala, that Latvia has endured a crisis as deep as Greece's. Latvia's over-exuberant boom was cut short by the global financial crisis in 2008, bringing a banking crash, a huge budget deficit, a bail-out by the European Union and imf and one of the harshest austerity regimes in Europe. Unlike Greece, Latvia made the wrenching adjustment with striking speed, and has since returned to robust growth (its prime minister, Valdis Dombrovskis, even managed to be re-elected).