Central bankers as good neighbours: US money doctors in Latin America during the 1940s

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Helleiner

AbstractThis article analyses a set of financial advisory missions led primarily by Robert Triffin of the US Federal Reserve Board to Latin American countries during the 1940s. These missions developed a new approach to international ‘money doctoring’ that rejected both the content and style of the better-known US financial advisory missions led by Edwin Kemmerer during the 1920s. The missions were driven by a number of motivations that emerged from the politics of the New Deal and the Good Neighbour policy. The episode highlights the diversity of international money doctoring experiences, the importance of the financial dimensions of the Good Neighbour policy, and the wider geographical impact of a new kind of financial internationalism that emerged in US foreign policy in the wake of the 1930s.

Author(s):  
Amy C. Offner

In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. This book brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, the book also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.


Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

The growth of Evangelical Protestantism and Pentecostalism is widely regarded as a potent argument against the validity of secularization theory. To explain this growth, Chapter 12 draws on theoretical approaches to analysing new social movements, which allows an expansion of the repertoire of explanations concerning religious change and a testing of alternatives to the models provided by secularization theory. To explain the worldwide growth and relative resilience of the Evangelical and Pentecostal movements, the chapter identifies a number of conditions and explanatory factors: cultural and social confirmation, religious syncretism, social deprivation, and the widespread magical worldview and broadly accepted spiritistic beliefs in Latin American countries that are conducive to the acceptance of Pentecostal experiences and healing rituals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Bittencourt Gonzalez Mosegui ◽  
Fernando Antõnanzas ◽  
Cid Manso de Mello Vianna ◽  
Paula Rojas

Abstract Background The objective of this paper is to analyze the prices of biological drugs in the treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) in three Latin American countries (Brazil, Colombia and Mexico), as well as in Spain and the United States of America (US), from the point of market entry of biosimilars. Methods We analyzed products authorized for commercialization in the last 20 years, in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, comparing them to the United States of America (USA) and Spain. For this analysis, we sought the prices and registries of drugs marketed between 1999 and October 1, 2019, in the regulatory agencies’ databases. The pricing between countries was based on purchasing power parity (PPP). Results The US authorized the commercialization of 13 distinct biologicals and four biosimilars in the period. Spain and Brazil marketed 14 biopharmaceuticals for RA, ten original, four biosimilars. Colombia and Mexico have authorized three biosimilars in addition to the ten biological ones. For biological drug prices, the US is the most expensive country. Spain’s price behavior seems intermediate when compared to the three LA countries. Brazil has the highest LA prices, followed by Mexico and Colombia, which has the lowest prices. Spain has the lowest values in PPP, compared to LA countries, while the US has the highest prices. Conclusion The economic effort that LA countries make to access these medicines is much higher than the US and Spain. The use of the PPP ensured a better understanding of the actual access to these inputs in the countries analyzed.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nubia Muñoz

It is too early to know which will be the final death toll from the Covid-19 or SARS-CoV-2 virus epidemy in Latin America since the epidemy is still active and we will not know when it will end. The curve for new infections and deaths has not reached yet a peak (Figure 1). In addition, we know little about the epidemiology of this new virus. The daily litany of the number of people infected with the number of admissions to hospitals and intensive care units and the number of deaths guides health authorities to plan health services and politicians to gauge the degree of confinement necessary to control the transmission of the virus, but it says little about the magnitude of the problem if we do not relate it to the population at risk. At the end of the pandemic, we will be able to estimate age-standardized death rates for the different countries, but until then the crude death rates will provide a first glance or snapshot of the death toll and impact of the pandemic from March to May 2020. These rates are well below those estimated in other countries in Europe and North America: Belgium (82.6), Spain (58.0), the United Kingdom (57.5), Italy (55.0), France (42.9), Sweden (41.4), and the US (30.7). (Johns Hopkins CSSE, May 30, 2020). However, in the European countries and the US the number of deaths has reached a peak, while this is not the case in Latin American countries. (Figure 1). It should be taken into account that the above rates are crude and therefore, some of the differences could be due to the fact that European countries have a larger proportion of the population over 70 years of age in whom higher mortality rates have been reported.


Author(s):  
Yangyang Ji

Abstract Eggertsson (2012, American Economic Review, 102, 524–55) finds that when the nominal interest rate hits the zero lower bound, the aggregate demand (AD) curve becomes upward-sloping and supply-side policies that reduce the natural rate of output, such as the New Deal implemented in the 1930s, are expansionary. His analysis is restricted to a conventional equilibrium where the AD curve is steeper than the aggregate supply (AS) curve. Recent research, however, demonstrates that an alternative equilibrium arises if the AD curve is flatter than the AS curve. In that case, the same policies become contractionary. In this article, I allow for both possibilities, and let data decide which equilibrium the US economy actually resided in during the Great Depression. Following the work of Blanchard and Quah (1989, American Economic Review, 79, 655–73), I find that there is a high probability that New Deal policies were contractionary. (JEL codes: E32, E52, E62, N12).


Subject The US election impact in Latin America. Significance Donald Trump's victory in the US elections was received with concern in Latin America, where most governments informally supported Hillary Clinton's campaign and were expecting continuity in US foreign policy. Trump's positions on migration are particularly worrying for Mexico and Central America. His agenda in other areas is not clear: during the campaign, he made few statements about the region and maintained some contradictory positions on several issues, including relations with Cuba. Impacts Trump's victory will have an impact on domestic policy debates in many countries. Backpedalling on climate change would represent a major regional concern. Already weak support for economic orthodoxy and reduced trade barriers will decline further.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (142) ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
"Mónica Bruckmann ◽  
Theotonio Dos Santos

At the beginning of the 20th century, social movements in Latin America were heavily influenced by anarchist immigrants from Europe and then by the ideological struggles around the Russian revolution. Beginning in the 1930s, many social movements started to incorporate into leftwing and populist parties and governments, such as the Cardenismo in Mexico. Facing the shift of many governments towards the left and the 'threat' of socialist Cuba, ultrarightwing groups and the military, supported by the US, responded in many countries with brutal repression and opened the neoliberal era. Today, after 30 years of repression and neoliberal hegemony, the social movements are gaining strength again in many Latin American countries. With the anti-globalization movement, new insurrections like the Zapatismo in Mexico, and some leftwing governments coming into power in Venezuela, Brasil and other countries, there appears to be a new turn in Latin America's road to the future.


Subject The latest US support for Taiwan. Significance The US State Department on September 24 approved the sale of 330 million dollars' worth of military aircraft parts to Taiwan -- the latest of several moves in Washington this month that increase support for Taiwan. On September 3, a bill was introduced to Congress that allows the State Department to penalise other countries for severing diplomatic relations with Taiwan. On September 7, senior US diplomats were recalled from Latin American countries that had done so. Impacts The US defence department will work more closely with Taiwan’s military to upgrade its capabilities. Despite US disapproval, more of Taiwan’s diplomatic partners will probably switch to China, given the economic incentives. Loss of diplomatic allies could become a major issue in Taiwan's 2020 national elections, to the ruling party's detriment.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document