Foreign businessmen: crisis in Estonia is at the initial stage
24.07.2008, 15:41Dag Kirsebom and Claudio Zucchelli, the
authors of a new book talking about Estonian economy's rise and fall, "Hard
landing", say crisis in Estonia is at the initial stage. According to them, the
year 2009 is likely to be even worse.
"This is noteworthy as we have still not seen one single prognosis with lower
GDP growth for 2009 compared to 2008. Everyone take for granted that the bottom
will be reached this fall or winter, and then things will point upwards again.
We unfortunately are not so optimistic", they authors told BBN.
"Estonia is not unique in its fairy tale, neither in historical terms or in
the world today. It seems to be in the human psyche to make these kind of
mistakes as they have happened so many times in history. What makes Estonia
somewhat special, at least compared to Western Europe, is the lack of
experience. Almost no Estonians have experienced a real capitalist recession.
Especially young Estonians between 20 - 25 take the boom for granted and seem to
have a hard time accepting any other state of mind."
Today several other young or smaller economies, like Latvia, Iceland and to
some extent Ireland, are experiencing a similar steep economic development.
The authors say estonians shouldn´t have borrowed so much and the
government should have put earlier a brake on inflation and excessive
consumption. But maybe most serious isn´t formal mistakes by the government, but
rather that they, with their rhetoric, have heightened the unhealthy boom
atmosphere when they should have tried to calm things down instead, the authors
suggest what could have been made differently to avoid the current situation.
“This book is an attempt to make even better a country that we have come to
love. We wanted to tell the story of the incredible rise and fall of the
Estonian economy.” Dag Kirsebom explains why the book "Hard landing" has been
written. Co-author Claudio Zucchelli says “We are not pretending to know the
country better than the Estonians themselves, we just can see things from a
different angle thanks to our diversified backgrounds".