Word: argentinas
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...felt like the end of the world at the edge of the earth. It was 2002, and Argentina was in economic free fall. The peso lost 75% of its value against the U.S. dollar, and the nation had defaulted on almost $100 billion of debt. Bank deposits were frozen to halt panicked runs, and an enraged middle class took to the streets. The country went through five Presidents in just two weeks. Wall Street feared that the crisis, one of the worst in South America's history, would spread next door to giant Brazil--where the élite predicted financial...
Five years later, Argentina's rapid recovery still has analysts doing double takes. Since President Néstor Kirchner was elected in 2003, annual growth has averaged 9%, the best in Latin America. Argentina has parlayed a cheaper but stable peso into record export earnings. "Argentina," crows Central Bank president Martín Redrado, "is enjoying its most solid macroeconomic context of the past 30 years." In Brazil, Lula's election (and 2006 re-election) did not render the region's largest economy a leftist basket case. Instead, inflation has fallen from 12.5% in 2002 to less than 4% today. Brazil...
Although Latin America attracts nowhere near the foreign direct investment (FDI) that Asia or even Eastern Europe does, competitiveness is on the rise among South America's ABC countries--Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Like most other Latin countries, the ABCs were pulled on the economic torture rack during the 20th century between socially negligent capitalism and fiscally profligate populism. But today they lead a potent common market, Mercosur. (Chile is an associate member.) And while each has a leftist President--Chile's Michelle Bachelet is also a socialist--the ABCs are spelling a model, "pragmatic socialism," says Jerry Haar...
...Argentina has danced the most difficult tango. Kirchner--whose wife Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was elected to succeed him as President last month--took populist measures to keep the country of 40 million governable. He renationalized some utilities and set export limits on essential goods like meat to moderate prices. But rather than blow a windfall from commodity exports--prices for Argentine products like soybeans have hit all-time highs in recent years--Argentina replenished its foreign reserves (a record $44 billion today), pared debt and built a strong fiscal surplus. "Overspending and overindebtedness caused the crisis," says...
...Argentina is just as sensibly working to cut its dependence on commodities-- the bane of almost every Latin economy. Argentina, which has one of the region's more skilled workforces, recently passed a biotechnology-promotion law to channel incentives to biotech firms. One, Bio Sidus, with $40 million in annual sales, is pioneering an affordable human-growth hormone from the milk of genetically modified calves cloned 60 miles (97 km) from Buenos Aires. "Our traditional cattle-ranching experience gives us a big advantage," says Bio Sidus president Marcelo Argüelles. "But our biggest challenge is obtaining financing at international rates...