South America Unites Against "Irresponsible Debtors" in the North

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South America Unites Against "Irresponsible Debtors" in the North
By Mario Osava*


RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 4, 2011 (IPS) - Default, insolvency, fiscal irresponsibility, debt crisis and similar terms form part of the vocabulary used to describe countries in the developing South in the 1980s and 1990s. A decade later, the world seems to have turned upside down.

The "irresponsible debtors" are now in the industrialised North, and the countries of South America, victims of the "lost decade" of the 1980s and the subsequent financial crises, are now working hard to protect themselves against contagion from the crisis in the United States and Europe.

A meeting of economy ministers in Lima Thursday and Friday and another scheduled for Aug. 12 in Buenos Aires, where the ministers will be joined by central bank presidents, are being held to discuss the coordination of policies among the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to deal with the knock-on effects of the crisis still lingering in the developed world.

There is talk about working together to mitigate the impact. But the developing world does not have financial power, nor does it have anything like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to impose the adoption of fiscal adjustment policies or to "aid" the rich countries, like what occurred when it was the poor countries that were insolvent. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56755