Word: latin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...salon in a duplex apartment on the uppermost floors. "I hired them only after some people tried to kidnap my teenage grandson two years ago." The physical risks of being rich keep rising in Argentina, as they do in any of the debt-strapped, inflation-ridden countries of Latin America. But the rich keep getting richer...
Every country has its rich and poor, but in Latin America the gap between them is especially vast and is growing worse. The richest 20% of families enjoy a more extravagant life-style than that of the upper class in such industrialized countries as the U.S. and Japan. On the other side is an enormous group, 60% to 80% of the population, whose situation is approaching the despair of sub-Saharan Africa or Bangladesh. Of Argentina's 32 million citizens, close to 10 million are below the poverty line (a family income of less than $100 a month...
...plight of Latin America's middle and lower classes is a radical reversal from the sunny days of the 1960s and early '70s, when the region's rapid economic growth offered the hope of broad-based prosperity. When the countries' heavy debt burdens triggered inflation and stagnation in the 1980s, most Latin American families began sliding rapidly into hardship. This year Mexico's annual inflation rate is running at 17% (down from 52% last year), Argentina's, 3,500% (up from 388%) and Brazil's, 1,600% (up from 934%). Perversely, the rich have helped perpetuate the economic malaise...
...Jeffrey Sachs, the glaring gap between rich and poor in Latin America is a major cause of the debt crisis that has racked the region. The boyish Harvard & economist, an adviser to debt-ridden countries from Bolivia to Poland, blames wealthy Latin elites for dodging taxes and arranging self-serving subsidies that have "sucked the blood" from many governments, forcing them to borrow heavily...
Sachs' message is simple: debtors must reform their economies by methods that include collecting more taxes from the elite, while U.S. banks must forgive at least half their $59 billion of loans to Latin borrowers. "I don't believe we should move in small steps," says the economist...