Savisaar: Eesti Energia’s oil business is waste of taxpayer money

The U.S. is not in the level of debt as popularly believed. The U.S. is debt to the American people. China owns about 16% of the American debt. U.S. Citizens own the brunt of U.S. debt by having invested in U.S. Bonds.

"Countries can control their economies through labor policy, pensions, the salaries and benefits of public workers and taxation (income, social and excise taxes as well as VAT)"

You know you get harsher and shriller the more people point out the constant "Estonia is best" crap.

Do you think there is a single country in Europe where people are proud to point out their "manufacturing base" consists of marginals such as furniture, boats and "metal objects".
These don't even figure even for a local town on the European scale of things.
Eg. The town of High Wycombe in the UK has made furniture for a century or more, Witney made textiles right back to the middle ages...but these are the kind of things which you want to PROVE makes little pygmy Estonia some sort of "manufacturing giant"...

In France they also make boats, have done for centuries in places like Nantes or Marseilles, do you think they are vaunting these as "their great manufacturing base"..

Your arguments are so patheticon the scale of it, you even try to claim you know something about economics.

Well being as you are so clever, you go and tell the Spanish or the Irish how to fix their broken economies.
They very CERTAINLY are not independent.
Not one little bit, but of course this you don't get.

Once you impose the straight-jacket of the Euro you can NO LONGER:-

1/ control through labor policy, because you are in direct competition with other countries and their labour rates denominated in the same currency.

2/ control through pensions, because as a result of high inflation, the pensions are no longer a safe investment. In fact because of the demographic crisis ALL pension schemes EU wide are bankrupt.

3/ control through the salaries of public workers...because EU wide the number of them is far too high, and they impose a dead weight on the economy. Your example of Estonia is perfect. They FROZE all these for 2 years, until such stage as those workers refuse to work for that money any more.

4/taxation income, social and excise taxes as well as VAT. In theory all very well, but in practice raising tax, just decreases demand, making it then impossible to collect that tax.
Witness the complete and total debacle of the new socialist government unde Hollande in France.
In a high tax world, people migrate themselves and their businesses to low tax places......eg. EBAY UK us based in Luxembourg and pays almost no corporation tax, Starbucks UK is based in Ireland...and so forth...

What gets me is you are economically illiterate, but claim to know everything.

This is normal, poor eastern Europeans given a little bit of money, think they are wealthy, given a little knowledge, start telling other people what to do.

If you were so clever since joining us in 2004, how come everyone is not following your expert advice in Estonia, and becoming wealthy again.

Because the only countries which can truly have some degree of independence in the EU are those that DIDN'T join the Euro.

Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, Poland.

All the ones that did, have had decade long slow growth and high unemployment, and cannot find a solution.

The only solution that is viable as Germany refuses to mutualise the Eurozone debts is for it to break up, so as those countries can fix their devaluation issues, and stop kicking the can down the road for their grandchildren to fix.

Sorry for you I am.
Estonia the great delusion of "independence" continues.

esti=NO says Estonia has NEVER been independent. Thus, there was no first republic and no independent Estonia now. Go ahead, esti=NO. Prove it. It will be fun to see your bizarre logic and lack of education at work.