
Progress to restore global financial stability has suffered a setback in advanced economies, the International Monetary Fund said in its latest Global Financial Stability Report, with markets still sensitive to negative surprises.

Countries risk undermining the global economic recovery if they use their currencies to try to boost domestic growth, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday in a newspaper interview.

The policies of extremely low interest rates maintained by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are plunging the world into chaos instead of helping with the recovery of the global economy, the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, Joseph Stiglitz, said on Tuesday.

Latin America and the Caribbean face potentially crippling economic and social costs from natural disasters and need to do more to reduce risks and prepare government finances to respond to eventual catastrophes, says a new set of indicators by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Brazil doubled this week the tax on foreign investors buying local bonds or making deposits in fixed returns in an attempt to curb a currency rally that has turned into an issue in the country's presidential race.

Latin America is poised to expand between 5.5% and 6% this year based on the sustained improvement of commodities pirces, productivity gains and domestic market expansion, said the president of the Inter American Development Bank, IDB, Luis Alberto Moreno.

World Bank president Robert Zoellick expressed concern about the renewed speculation with agriculture commodities which in the last months have seen prices of food in developing countries soar

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said he sees tensions arising from currency devaluations as nations seek to boost their economies, though he doesn’t expect them to turn into “wars.”

Uruguay’s gross public sector debt contracted in the second quarter of the year after five consecutive periods of sustained increase and now stands at 21.885 billion US dollars equivalent to 59.5% of GDP.

Spain could face a crisis similar to that of Argentina back in 2001 because of its incapacity to create jobs and reduce the fiscal deficit, which makes it an easy prey for international speculators.