It is a holiday week in Australia – the cricket is on (not interested); the weather is good and it is virtually impossible to get a tradesperson to fix a new electricity connection. But who am I to complain when our fortunes are compared to the costs being endured in other nations where governments have deliberately followed policy trajectories which are designed to inflict damage on their real economies – in the mistaken belief that TINA rules. TINA (There Is No Alternative) is one of those neo-liberal ploys which hoodwinks citizens into believing that gross damage is better than really gross damage but which is really an agenda for retrenching the welfare state and freeing markets up for further private sector rape. There are alternatives to what is going on at present and it requires much stronger public sector intervention. I was thinking about this today when I was reviewing the latest data from Latvia which is now being held out as the “model” for the rest of Europe to follow. It is clear that eventually growth does return to these ravaged economies but that doesn’t validate the policy approach. It just says that business cycles cycle. The real way of assessing the alternatives is to compare how deep the policy-induced damage becomes and how long it lasts. The neo-liberal austerity line does not look good in that regard.