Latvia’s Economy Falls At A 10.5% Rate In Q4 2008

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Well don’t come to this blog looking for good economic news at the moment, becuase quite frankly, at least as far as Europe is concerned, there isn’t any. Today we learn that Latvia’s economy is in freefall. The economy contracted 10.5 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, the sharpest fall in the entire European Union, as the credit crunch bit deep, consumer demand collapsed and manufacturing spiraled downdards.

The drop in gross domestic product, the largest since quarterly annual records began in 1995, compares with a revised 5.2 percent drop in the third quarter.

Quite frankly, such is the situation that I am fast running out of metaphors – freefall, abyss, precipice, meltdown – there is a growing danger of my having to repeat and repeat myself.

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About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

One thought on “Latvia’s Economy Falls At A 10.5% Rate In Q4 2008”

  1. well lavia get only what they deserved, thanks to USA, ONLY SAD FOR RUSSIAN PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE AND WHO MUST ENDURE THE RECESSION OVER THE MANY PROBLEM LATVIAN GOVERNMENT GIVE THEM IN THE PAST LIKE ALIAN PASSPORT FOR RUSSIAS PEOPLE WHO WAS BORN AND LIVE THERE ALL THEIR LIFE, FORCE TO SPEAK THEIR LATVIAN LANGUAGE, CAN NOT VOTE,,,HOPE ALL RUSSIAN GO AWAY LIKE THE GOVERNMENT WANT AND SEE THE ROLLER COSTER OF LATVIA FOR YEARS TO COME…….

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