Friday, March 6, 2009

Iceland, Ireland, Estonia...

The Estonian President, Toomas Hendrik, on a grandstanding visit to the Welsh Assembly last October said he didn’t, ""believe the collapse of Icelandic banks has doomed the concept of small, "clever" countries.""
"In terms of small countries, it’s basically how you do things.

Plaid Cymru and the SNP (conveniently forgetting the country's less than stellar record on minority rights) lapped it all up:
Estonia's success has shown how quickly a small independent nation can flourish by taking full responsibility for its own affairs. Isn’t it time Scotland did the same?

No, if you read the latest figures, probably not; Bloomberg is reporting:
Estonia’s $21.3 billion economy contracted an annual 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter, heightening investor concerns the country may not be able to weather the global credit freeze.

Estonian industrial production fell the most in the 27- member European Union in December as the economic crisis shuts off export demand, exacerbating a slump in consumer spending that began at the start of 2008.

Estonia and neighboring Latvia are the most battered economies in eastern Europe as the global decline curbs demand for their exports while shutting off credit and investment. Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service put Estonia’s ratings on review for a possible downgrade in February, citing the worsening economic outlook.

*Bang* goes another role-model.

3 comments:

JD said...

A bit snarky putting Ireland in that group of nations surely, seeing how the UK is equally in the brown messy stuff. I expected more from you O'Neill.

Incidentally before you continue to follow this road perhaps you should see the comments made by Citi Group, the IMF, the ECB, Fitch and a host of other sources that attest to the solid foundations that the Irish economy is now built on and that Ireland (glad to see you're finally using the correct nomenclature) is well positioned to take advantage of the up swing.

O'Neill said...

It's more targeted at the SNP's previous Arc of Prosperity where the argument was made that it was the various country's smaller size which was at the bottom of their economic success. The present situation in reverse has disproved that. I don't think it was that snarky, if the ROI sinks then it will take a fair part of the NI economy with it, so Schadenfreude would be most definitely an inappropriate emotion in this case.

re the Ireland, i've kept telling the SNP to update their terminology but will they listen to me?!;)

JD said...

Ha