Maybe we Americans can learn from Latvia. Yes, Latvia.

To the geographically challenged, Latvia is a small country (population: 2.2 million) bordering the Baltic Sea with two other tiny neighbors, Estonia and Lithuania. More relevant for our purposes, Latvia has just come through a horrendous economic crisis far worse than anything Americans have yet endured. Unemployment reached 20.5 percent in early 2010; Latvia's gross domestic product — its output — dropped 25 percent from its peak. (By contrast, the U.S. decline was 4.1 percent.)