Latin American economies are hurting too

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Only a few weeks ago, some Latin American leaders were confidently predicting, if not boasting outright, that their nations’ economies would be able to weather the fiscal hurricanes sweeping through U.S. and European markets.

But as the global financial crisis has spread, many of the region’s leaders now are acknowledging that they’re not immune from the panic, writes the L.A. Times’ Patrick J. McDonnell from Buenos Aires.

‘The abrupt end of the worldwide commodities boom has stunned Latin American nations that had bet the farm on the idea that raw materials were a ticket to boundless prosperity in the globalized economy.

‘A galloping sense of insecurity has replaced the swaggering confidence that insatiable demand would keep prices up for products such as soybeans, copper, wheat and coffee. But commodities have tumbled in value in the wake of the financial meltdown.

‘Some even fear that Latin America’s most prolonged growth spurt in years could be over, ushering in an era of renewed austerity.

’ ‘We’re sailing without a compass,’ said Nilson Wirth Monteiro, a consultant with Link Investments in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the epicenter of Latin America’s largest economy. ‘There’s no compass to indicate how commodities and global markets will behave.’ ‘

-- Reed Johnson in Los Angeles