Reveries

Watching Domburs’ Show while making some exercises, made me realise that Kampars’ voice is practically the same of Homer Simpson in ‘The Simpsons’ Brazilian version. Although an interesting discovery, this is not the most important thing one can realize watching tonight’s Kas Notiek Latvija. I just realized the guys are preparing one of the biggest [...]

One Saturday, after hearing a conference at SSE Riga, Jānis Ošlējs and I started to talk how would be great to have a conference discussing economic development beyond the ideological approaches common to Latvia. So, we started working on it, we added Jānis Grēviņš to the team, and here we are. The conference’s speakers are [...]

The general congress of Tautas Partija has taken place today (see pictures of the event on the left and below). In this ocasion, its propositions to fight the crisis were presented. It consists of ten points reflecting the needs/opinions of the people responsible for the current crisis. Generally speaking, they aren’t able to go beyond [...]

A revolutionary group in Brazil called MR-8 (Movimento Revolucionario 8 de outubro) because of the day Che Guevara was arrested in Bolivia, still exists and supports one of the worst Brazilian politician, Orestes Quercia. They concluded that Quercia is the only one able to make things in Brazil so bad, that people will end their [...]

Interesting article, but as usual, exaggerated. From the FT. Published: June 4 2009 20:10 | Last updated: June 4 2009 20:10 Latvia and its Baltic neighbours Estonia and Lithuania are going through their most severe economic crisis since the Soviet Union disintegrated. Their troubles matter beyond their own borders: they could trigger a new wave [...]

Ivars Ījabs is one of the most interesting political scientists in Latvia. He has really good ideas and has a multidisciplinary baggage that gives to him the ability to go beyond the usual boundaries of most of Latvia’s political scientists. We were colleagues at the PhD program of the University of Latvia. Ījabs wrote an [...]

When I wrote back in 2006 (click here)  that Latvia would bankrupt because of the irresponsable economic policies, or better, because of the lack of any logic economic policy, everybody told me that I was wrong. They said that Latvia would forever face a strong and sustainable growth based on speculation with real estate actives [...]

To start the week with positive vibrations, here is a promotional video about Latvia, produced by the Latvian Institute. In my opinion it’s beautiful and positive, showing nice things of and about the country. However, some pseudo-intelectuals wannabes and other people desliked. Maybe they were aiming to see not a nice video but something showing [...]

Finally, I have time to write about a question that is being discussed in the last months and that is disturbing a lot of Latvians: inflation and devaluation. As I have written before, a high inflation rate in Latvia is to be expected, as the natural result of the GDP’s growth. By its time, the [...]

The discussion about the “presents” Latvian doctors receive from patients continues and the lobbies are working very hard, in order to legalise this practice. As Latvians politicians often do not take the public opinion in consideration, maybe we will see the Saeima approving a law legalising what is, in most of the cases, corruption. However, [...]