"Estonia is in the grip of mass hysteria!"

So says Jürgen Ligi anyway, Chairman of the Parliamentary Finance Committee and former Defence Minister. Rather boringly, he was commenting on the use and abuse of credit cards and SMS loans by portions of the population who should know better, i.e. those living hand to mouth, and not some potentially much more interesting outbreak of random insanity.

Another deposed paper-pusher, Aivar "Best Finance Minister in the World" Sõerd, weighed into the debate with tuppence of his own, claiming that people see no point in trying to save money because the intractably high inflation in the country devours it as soon as look at it, and shows no signs of abating.

Heido Vitsur, not a former minister but instead the resident Expert with the Estonian Development Fund (is that what they're called in their job description??), adds that a lot of companies are falling into the same trap: instead of investing their money where they should - in development - they are busy stocking up on status symbols in the mistaken belief that this will be of any long-term benefit to them.

I've often said that Estonia in 2007 is like the rest of the western world ca 1987.