The year was 1994, and a depressed Brazil was desperately in need of a lift. Recent years had seen a president impeached for corruption, inflation in excess of 2,500 percent, horrendous massacres of innocents inside a prison and outside a church, and a general feeling the country couldn’t do anything right. As June approached, so … Read more
Corrections appended below Updated 8/17/2016 New leadership atop Brazil’s massive national development bank is unwinding a decade of rampant lending that fed large conglomerates and strained the country’s finances. Over the past half-century, Brazil’s Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Economico e Social (BNDES) built huge power plants and highways through the industrial southeast, aided social programs in the … Read more
A great way to understand Agustín Carstens is to hear how he defines himself and his peers —“The Generation of 12.50.” That may sound obscure to outsiders, but anyone who grew up in Mexico during the 1950s, ’60s or ’70s instantly understands. For 22 consecutive years, the peso was fixed at exactly 12.50 per dollar … Read more
Venezuela’s “know-how” economist has helped countries like Colombia, Mexico and Peru shield themselves from boom and bust cycles.
It’s been yet another rough week for Brazil’s international image, with an Olympic mascot shot dead in an absurd accident and another national political figure dragged into scandal. But the biggest blow of all came from Declan Ryan, co-founder of the Irish budget airline Ryanair, who told an Argentine newspaper that he was considering expansion … Read more
This piece was updated on June 22 In 1946, the last year casinos were legal in Brazil, the ritzy Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro was pulling in nearly $100 million a year from roulette and other table games. A frequent gambler was Benjamin Vargas, brother to a former president, who was notorious for chasing … Read more
Desperate for a lifeline from the U.S. Congress, university students in Puerto Rico are pushing local politicians to take an extreme step – default on their debt. With the island’s fiscal troubles going from bad to worse, student leaders say default on upcoming payments is the only way to force Congress to pass restructuring legislation … Read more
This article was updated on May 4. Latin America and the Caribbean are on course for back-to-back years of recession for the first time in 35 years, but the pain isn’t being spread equally. With some of the highest jobless rates of any age group in the region, young Latin Americans have proven particularly vulnerable to … Read more
Havaianas is to Brazil what Apple is to the United States. More than a pair of flip-flops, they are part of the country’s self-image, a product that embodies the idea of Brazil as a carefree country of surf, samba and soccer. So the distressed sale in November of Havaianas’ parent company, Alpargatas S.A., was symbolically … Read more
Brazil’s political crisis is moving at such intense speed that it’s hard for even dedicated analysts to keep up. AQ’s editor-in-chief spoke on Tuesday with Moody’s ratings agency’s chief analyst for Brazil, Samar Maziad, about how the changes in Brasilia are affecting the economy. At the time, there were rumors that former President Luiz Inácio … Read more
Last year was a good one for global airlines. Thanks to falling fuel prices and an increased demand for air travel, the industry earned an estimated $33 billion in 2015. Carriers around the globe earned near-record profits. Not so in Argentina, where according to official figures state-run Aerolíneas Argentinas operated at a loss of nearly … Read more
The United States consists of 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories — one of which is Puerto Rico. Individuals born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, but island residents cannot vote for president or senators. The territory has a single delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives who can vote in … Read more
Now might seem like an odd time to look for signs of hope in Brazil. Dilma Rousseff has an approval rating of just 10 percent, she faces possible impeachment proceedings, scandal has frozen activity at the country’s biggest companies, inflation runs around 10 percent and the economy is expected to shrink 3 percent this year. … Read more
The struggle between old and new forms of economic development, and efforts to strike a balance between them, will be a defining feature of society and business in the future. The sharing economy is still a poorly understood concept.1 It has been defined as “an economic system in which assets or services are shared between … Read more
A bloated informal sector has long been a nagging structural problem in Latin America and in the developing world more generally. However, over the past few decades, it has proliferated as a result of the withdrawal of the state from market and social regulation. In particular, it has grown as governments have undertaken structural adjustment … Read more
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