Anastasia: la crisis, una oportunidad para Latinoamerica

(pero no para todos):

The region's most reform-minded countries are now under attack by socialists who
claim that the meltdown is cause for abandoning market economics. Just the
opposite is true.

Thanks to the reforms of the past two decades the most open Latin economies are in a much better position today than they were in the 1980s when Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker tightened credit to attack inflation. They should not be allowed to backslide. This is the time to accelerate liberalization with an eye toward greater economic flexibility.

As Lula rightly noted, "all the planet's countries" now have problems as
a result of government failure in the U.S. and Europe. Lax monetary policy at
the Federal Reserve starting in 2002 and government policies designed to
aggressively expand U.S. homeownership created an asset bubble in the G-7.

That bubble has burst and the explosion has scattered impaired assets
like shrapnel throughout the financial system of Europe and the U.S. Banks need
to be recapitalized, and government "help" may be making things worse. The
handling of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's bailout plan seems to have lowered
the market's confidence that a solution is near.

There is not much Latin America can do about the leadership vacuum in the U.S. or Europe. But it can anchor its own ship. Serious Latin economies -- obviously we don't mean Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras or Bolivia -- have spent the past two decades preparing for such a moment.