Word: debt
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
...Waive the Johnson Debt Default Act, which prohibits private loans to Moscow...
...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...
That blunt diagnosis is typical of Sachs, 34, an economics wunderkind who was a tenured professor at 29 and has become a champion of debt relief for developing countries. He first gained renown for his advice to Bolivia, which slashed its inflation rate from more than 20,000% in 1985 to 15% today. When Sachs visited Argentina last June, talk-show hosts rushed to schedule interviews. In a single hectic week last month, Sachs was in Peru and Brazil and then jetted to Warsaw, where he advises the new government...
Such advice has often placed Sachs in a cross fire between U.S. bankers, who oppose large-scale debt forgiveness, and populist foreign critics, who resent his calls for fiscal austerity. Walter Wriston, the former chairman of Citicorp, whose Citibank unit has more than $8 billion in outstanding Latin American loans, calls Sachs "a paid flack for the countries of Latin America." Wriston argues that widespread loan write-offs would prevent Latin countries from receiving new credit. At the same time, Julio Bravo, finance secretary of the Bolivian Worker's Central Union, charges that as a result of Sachs' advice, "salaries...