ABSTRACT
The small Baltic republic of Latvia suffered the largest contraction of any European economy following the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. Reckless lending from Swedish banks fueling a Latvian property bubble caused the collapse. Its bubble had to burst, just as similar bubbles were bursting from the United States to other parts of Europe. Making matters worse, Latvia’s debt legacy was primarily denominated in euros, thus reprising the problem of the Global South in the debt crisis of the 1980s when loans had to be paid back in a foreign currency, in that case the then strong US dollar.
