New York Times’ Bizarre and Misleading Praise of Austerity Poster Child Latvia

Philip Pilkington in Naked Capitalism:

After reading it [the New York Times article] I initially made my way over to Eurostat to look at the data and see if the facts led to a different narrative of Latvia’s experience with austerity.

Then I realised that this was an entirely pointless endeavour. Much better, I thought, to analyse the article itself rather than the statistics – which, if the reader cares to look into without blinkers will how the information presented by the Times is actually inconsistent with the happy face it attempts to put on Latvia’s exercise. In what follows then I include only details which are found in the original NYT article. We’ll look not at Latvia’s plight but the Times’ narrative to see how coherent it is on its own terms and, most importantly, what it attempts to convey.

The article begins with a story about a man who faced the austerity bravely. Because his newborn son required surgery he bought a tractor and began hauling wood to make ends meet. Quite the imagery, of course. Rugged, sturdy – very Baltic.

This is the theme throughout. Latvia is seen as a country that can endure the pain, whereas countries like Greece cannot. What the author means by this is that in Latvia people have largely accepted the cuts without protest while in Greece they have not. This is conveyed well by the image of the man hauling wood in order to ensure that his newborn child gets the surgery it needs.

What is so unusual about this piece and what strikes the informed reader straight away is that such endurance is seen as curative. As the headline says “used to hardship, Latvia accepts austerity, and pain eases”. The problem is that the piece doesn’t seem to ever substantiate this claim. Sure, there’s the story of a man who fires his employees only to rehire them after the worst of the recession is over, but this is just a story. I’m sure there are similar stories in Ireland, Spain or Greece if an eager reporter were to look hard enough. But when it comes to statistics – you know, the way we generally measure the effects of economic policies – the proof is strangely lacking.