The National Review quotes CGD senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez on Latin American economies.
From the article:
"At a recent Brookings Institution event, former Chilean finance minister Nicolás Eyzaguirre, now head of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department, said that Latin America’s progress was an “earned outcome” and not simply the result of good luck. Since the global financial meltdown began, he noted, not a single Latin American country has suffered a domestic banking crisis. The region has achieved a newfound exchange-rate stability, which, as economist Liliana Rojas-Suarez pointed out, has enabled Latin officials to keep interest rates low and conduct countercyclical monetary policy, rather than (as they often did during previous recessions) hike interest rates to defend overvalued exchange rates. Rojas-Suarez, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, agreed that Latin America’s demonstrated resilience “is related to policy choices made before the crisis.” As the IMF observes, the region’s financial systems “are much better prepared and more resilient than in the past because earlier weaknesses, such as exposure to currency depreciation or reliance on external financing, have been greatly reduced, and important capital buffers have been built.”"