A joke making the rounds in Latin American business circles says Brazil is looking increasingly like Argentina, Argentina is looking increasingly like Venezuela, and Venezuela is looking increasingly like Zimbabwe.Oppenheimer concludes it is a fair appraisal of Venezuela, but unnecessarily gloomy about Argentina and Brazil. He is probably right about Brazil.
COTTonLINE is downbeat about Argentina. Its Peronist political culture has an absolute genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
As an assessment of the economy of the region, I find this Oppenheimer summary very useful:
Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile are doing well, and may drag several other countries in their direction. Together with Brazil, the four Pacific-coast countries make up more than 75 percent of Latin America’s economy.The market-oriented economies of those five nations are responsible for their relative prosperity.
