reserve will be very important. – under the current circumstances, structural reforms in education and healthcare systems gain even more importance. it is my great hope that in 2016, serious reforms will take place in both of these areas, in order to improve latvia ’ s competitiveness, and that measures will concurrently bet taken to explain to the population why such reforms are necessary and what positive effect they will have on our economy in the future. why am i discussing budget matters at this time? we are worried about the obvious fact that all possibilities for organizing the budget have been exhausted. it is said that latvia can no longer sustain tax revenues at the level of 28 % of gdp and that the budget is overall too small. thus groundwork has been laid for the raising of taxes next year. under such circumstances, the latvian business environment would be seriously endangered and, with it, any successful economic development in the future. we have at least six months till the drafting of the next budget begins and i hope that the ministry of finance and the government will launch a serious discussion for us to see what the government is spending overall and whether the only way to improve the budget situation is to continue brutally raising the taxes. bis central bankers ’ speeches

to issue a half - cent coin at that time. in other words, the purchasing power of new zealand's money had declined by over 90 per cent over a period of just 30 years - despite inflation being quite low for the last 10 years of that period. and in case you feel that new zealand's performance was substantially worse than australia's over that period, it is worth noting that the domestic purchasing power of the australian dollar also fell heavily over the 30 years from 1967, by over 85 per cent. there is nothing fair, just, or even honest in a monetary system which steals people's savings, or rewards those lucky enough to go heavily into debt at the right time. there can be little doubt that some of those who today are wealthy in both our countries became wealthy as much through having the real value of their borrowings evaporate before their eyes as through their own efforts and initiative. and this sends absolutely the wrong message to everyone making saving, spending, and investment decisions. i know that when i returned to new zealand in 1971 after living overseas for nine years, four of them in australia, i bought a house for $ 43, 000 by paying a small deposit and borrowing the balance. fifteen years later, the house had a market value of nearly 10 times the price i paid for it, so that instead of owning just 10 per cent of it, as i did in 1971, with the bank effectively owning the balance, by 1986 i owned almost all of it. that increase in my equity was substantially larger than anything i had been able to save out of my post - tax income during those 15 years. on the other side of the ledger so to speak, my elderly uncle sold the apple orchard on which he had worked all his life, by chance also in 1971. to keep the sale proceeds safe - the orchard had represented virtually his entire life's savings - he invested them in 18 year government bonds, then yielding 5. 4 per cent. perhaps fortunately, he died before the bonds matured in 1989, because by that time the $ 30, 000 for which he had sold his orchard would have bought him one small, four - cylinder, car - not much of a retirement nest egg. in 1971, $ 30, 000 would have bought him 11 of the same fourcylinder cars, a much more substantial retirement nest egg. i, and people like me, benefited enormously at the expense of my uncle and people like him, and all