Latvian lawmakers approve 2010 austerity budget amid angry protests

[Robbien]

Source: AP

RIGA, LATVIA — Latvian lawmakers approved an extremely unpopular budget for 2010 late Tuesday despite multiple protests throughout the day. Legislators passed the belt-tightening budget — which includes higher taxes on personal income and motor vehicles and steep cuts in education and social service expenditures — by a vote of 64-30.

Though the budget angered Latvians, lawmakers had little choice but to pass it in order to satisfy international lenders and continue receiving emergency bailout funds.

Approximately 2,000 students shouted and waved banners outside Parliament and later called for Education Minister Tatjana Koke to resign. Earlier, trade union members had protested outside the government building.

. . .

Last December international lenders agreed to provide a three-year, euro7.5 billion bailout loan to Latvia to prevent the country of 2.3 million people from going into bankruptcy. To qualify for the loan, Latvia's center-right government has had to enact painful expenditure cuts, increase taxes and implement sweeping reforms in the public sector.

One result of the crisis, as well as the reforms, has been a sharp jump in joblessness.



Read more: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/economy/ap/latvian-lawmakers-approve-2010-austerity-budget-amid-angry-protests-78250997.html

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Latvia's elite benefit from the IMF loan while the IMF demanded the middle and lower classes be penalized. No wonder the tar and pitchforks were brought out.

[WriteDown]

1. This sounds like madness. nt

[izquierdista]

2. How's that breakup working out?

At least in the Soviet days, the elite had to pretend to be class neutral.

[David__77]

4. The breakup is a disaster in general.

That said, the Baltics should probably not have been permanently incorporated into the USSR. It would have been better had they become people's democracies instead. Then they could have gone their own way in 1989 without hampering the unity of the Soviet republics.

[harmonicon]

3. yeah, that seems like a very strange loan

over 3,000 euro per citizen.... I'm guessing they don't feel like they've seen that. To put that in perspective, that's something like if the US got a one-time loan of 1.5 trillion dollars .... and decided to pay it back quickly.

[carrowsboy]

5. Hmmmm

Why do I get the sinking feeling that Victor Von Doom is behind this?