Venezuela’s government officially requested this week to leave the World Bank’s arbitration court as demands pile up from abroad for compensation following a decade of nationalizations under President Hugo Chavez.
Fully recovered from the thyroidectomy and with her irony sharp as ever, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, CFK, resumed office on Wednesday and in an hour plus colloquial speech in Casa Rosada spent a good twenty minutes talking about Malvinas, colonialism and promised more rigour in the campaign to have the UK sit and discuss Falklands sovereignty.
The Federal Reserve has said it does not now expect to raise interest rates in the US until late 2014. The surprise move announced Wednesday sent the dollar sharply lower in markets, and caused US government borrowing costs to fall.
Chile has emerged as the most globalized economy in Latin America and moved up to 25th place in the world, according to global consulting firm Ernst & Young. Chile is among the countries to improve their position despite global economic uncertainty, the firm’s annual Globalization Index found.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to business leaders at the World Economic Forum to give policy makers the space they need to tackle the debt crisis, pledging that Europe will pull together and restore confidence.
Greece's public sector creditors may need to participate in a restructuring of its debt if a haircut negotiated with private sector bondholders is not enough to make Athens' debt sustainable, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said.
Greece's sovereign debt restructuring appears to be following the footsteps of Argentina's disorderly debt default of 2002, a creditor that is participating in the negotiations warned this week.
Latin American growth this year should stay under the 4% estimated previously at 3.6% since the region is susceptible to the slowing down of the world’s economy and increasing risks of the financial crisis on the Euro zone, according to the IMF World Economic Outlook released Tuesday.
President Barack Obama has attacked income inequality as he set the tone for his re-election bid in his third State of the Union speech. Obama emphasised the importance of an economy that works for everyone, in the nationally televised address to Congress.
In his last public appearance as Argentine acting President, Vice-President Amado Boudou announced on Tuesday the figures of 2011’s fiscal surplus and gave a strong defence of the Kirchner economic inclusive development model.