The Whiff Of Contagion

摘要

Amid the wreckage of Latvia's retailing industry, which has declined 17% year on year according to the latest figures, one item is selling well: T-shirts with seemingly mysterious slogans such as "Nasing spe-sal". Latvians are glad to have something to laugh about, even if it is only their finance minister, Atis Slakteris. In an ill-judged foreign television interview, using heavily accented and idiosyncratic English worthy of the film character Borat, he described his country's economic problems as "nothing special".rnPut mildly, that was an original interpretation. Fuelled by reckless bank lending, particularly in construction and consumer loans, Latvia had enjoyed a colossal boom, with double-digit economic growth and a current-account deficit that peaked at over 20% of gdp. Conventional wisdom would have suggested applying the brakes hard, by tightening the budget and curbing borrowing. But the country's rulers, a lightweight lot with close ties to business, rejected that. Fast economic growth made voters feel that European Union membership was at last producing practical benefits, after a disappointing start when tens of thousands of Latvians went abroad inrnsearch of work, leaving rural villages and small towns depopulated.