An RBS branch in England. Photo: ITN

In the U.K., the Royal Bank of Scotland has become the leading symbol of the country’s banking crisis.

RBS announced more big losses this week yet still found room to award its employees almost $2.5 billion in bonuses. That has sparked a good deal of outrage.

The bank’s rationale for the bonuses is similar to what many U.S. banks have said to justify big payouts.

Are the bailed-out U.S. and U.K. banks irresponsible for paying such big bonuses while still holding such a tight squeeze on credit?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please be respectful and on-point. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned.

European markets faltered this week, as worries mounted that the threat of financial crises in Greece, Portugal, and Spain could spread across the Eurozone — and possible beyond.

Daljit Dhaliwal spoke with Marcus Mabry, international business editor of The New York Times, about a potential European financial meltdown and what it means for the rest of the world–  and the United States.

Sunday’s vote for members of the lower house of parliament gave Merkel a comfortable center-right majority, thanks to a strong performance by the pro-business Free Democrats, who will become the key partner in Merkel’s alliance. As she prepares for a second four-year term, she made it clear that she will continue to seek consensus as Germany weathers the economic crisis.

Nikolaus Piper, a senior correspondent in New York for the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the major issues of the German election and Merkel’s victory.

C. Fred Bergsten, the director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the possibility of a fall in the value of the dollar and how a falling dollar might impact Chinese investment.

But despite a turnaround for those countries, much of Europe is still mired in recession.

Roben Farzad, a senior writer for BusinessWeek, joins Martin Savidge to discuss how fast the world economy is rebounding and to analyze what it will mean for the United States.

After two days of high-level talks between U.S. and Chinese officials, no fine details were agreed upon, but the Obama administration has agreed to reduce its deficit once the financial crisis has abated.

Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics joins Martin Savidge to discuss the evolving economic relations between the two countries.

It’s a task complicated by both a worldwide financial crisis and a steep learning curve about economics.

Watch the full film and find more information at the Wide Angle website.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Ethiopia, visit our extended coverage page: Ethiopia Past and Present.

In 1998, just six Chinese companies were on the Fortune 500 global list of the world’s largest companies, while 185 American companies were included. Ten years later, 37 Chinese companies made the list, while U.S. companies had decreased to 140.

Brian Dumaine, Fortune’s global editor, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the economic rise of China and Japan and China’s role in recovery from the global recession.

John Authers, the investment editor for The Financial Times, joins Martin Savidge to discuss what European countries are doing to combat the recession, new regulations that may be proposed at the summit and where the markets may be headed.

For more on the summit, read Worldfocus blogger Nina Hachigian’s take: The three-ring G-8 summit

U.S. President Barack Obama joins other world leaders at the G-8 summit in Italy. Official photo: Maurizio Brambatti

By all accounts, planning for the upcoming Group of 8 Summit-polooza in Italy has been disastrous. Complex logistics are one problem. Ever since Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi decided to allow PR considerations to trump sanity and move the location of the summit to earthquake-stricken L’Aquila, tremor measurements and evacuation plans have dominated the news coverage.

Another cloud is Berlusconi the man, who has been plagued by multiple scandals, the most recent involving very young women with very few clothes. But the underlying trouble is the G-8 itself. The world simply needs a different set of countries at the high table of global governance to tackle today’s challenges.

Inertia is the mother of this G-8 summit. It is occurring because the member countries—the United States, Germany, Japan, France, Great Britain, Canada, Russia, and Italy—agreed a number of years ago that it would. Over the years, though, the G-8 has lost credibility because it does not reflect the realities of power, influence, and capacity in the world today. For that and other reasons, the G-8 has not been able to effectively address today’s global problems.

Yet the G-8 is the only leaders forum the world has had. So the staged meetings, the scripted communiqués, and the photo-ops have carried on, with only the occasional deliverable to interrupt the flow.

That changed in late 2008, when President George W. Bush brought the Group of 20 to life at the leaders’ level, recognizing that China, India, Brazil, and other major economies needed to be at the table to plan a coordinated response to the global economic crisis. In response, Italy this year decided that instead of giving up the G-8 host prerogative—the political equivalent of a cheetah giving up its prey—it announced it would also invite the G-20 countries to meet alongside the G-8. That idea was later pushed aside and the three-day summit now includes meetings of the G-8, the G-8 plus emerging economies, the Major Economies Forum (17 countries), and the G-8 plus emerging economies plus leaders from select African countries. That’s a lot of Gs.

The most valuable commodity in international politics—leaders’ time, especially President Barak Obama’s time—is being lavished on all these meetings. I truly hope breakthroughs result because the issues on the table could not be more serious—the economic crisis, development, and climate change, among others.

There is some cause for hope. A draft communiqué suggests that the one area where a group of rich countries such as the G-8 can add value—allocating funds to alleviate poverty—will be approached in a new and sensible way. Instead of offering food to developing countries, the G-8 may instead pledge billions for agricultural development. While that will anger U.S. farmers, it promises to be more effective at actually feeding hungry people over the long term.

There is also the possibility of an agreement to conclude the stalled Doha round of trade talks in 2010. Further, the Major Economies Forum is set to debate on an agreement to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times and solidify last year’s “vision” of halving global carbon emissions by 2050.

Outcomes like these would be terrific. But at some point fairly soon, these G groupings need to be rationalized. Aside from all the leaders time, the separate meetings of the G-8 before the emerging economies (traditionally called the G-8+5, or the “Outreach 5”) create divisions among the countries that are now playing out in the worldwide media about whether or not a new global currency is part of the summit agenda. And with the invitees constantly shifting, officials spend their time deciding who is in the room instead of solving the pressing matters of the day.

Building a better G-Pick Your Number will not be easy. Hell hath known no fury like a politician uninvited to a leaders forum. To add to the challenges, Europe is overrepresented in every of these groups and yet the most enthusiastic about them. Yet all this fluidity in the Gs does means the window for forging a new forum is open, but who knows for how long.

What should the new G look like? My colleagues and I have suggested that the new leaders forum be the G-20, but a G-20 whose membership is mandated to evolve over time as the major economies of the world change and that has only 20 seats at the table, not the 27 it has already grown to include.

Grumbling about Italy has reached a point where some European diplomats have suggested replacing Italy with Spain in the G-8. It would be better if they just replaced the entire G-8 with a leaders group for the 21st century.

- Nina Hachigian

This post originally appeared at the Center for American Progress.

Roben Farzad, a senior writer for BusinessWeek, joins Martin Savidge to discuss where the economy stands and how different world regions are handling unemployment.

A Liberian boy tackles a coconut.

As the second half of 2009 begins, global stock markets have rebounded. But this may mask much of the pain still being felt around the world, as unemployment remains a huge problem.

Japan’s 5.2 percent unemployment rate is one of its highest since the end of World War II, while in Spain, unemployment has surged past 18 percent. But these figures pale in comparison to those in Liberia, where the vast majority of people — up to 85 percent — are unemployed.

Worldfocus contributing blogger Myles Estey is in Monrovia, Liberia, and describes how people get by without formal employment.

Gettin’ By

As the United States and Canada start to freak out that their unemployment rates approach the double digits, officially, Liberia’s unemployment rate remains, on paper, as 85 percent. Almost, but not quite, making it an inverse relationship.

The CIA Factbook uses this 85 percent stat, and I think everyone else cites it and throws it around like its an iron-clad stat. Its not.

While Liberia certainly lacks locations for official, regulated employment, that only 15 percent of the population works is an absurd assumption, and one that would be practically unattainable. While severe poverty is rampant, Liberians are not starving to death. Reason being, that as in any society where basic infrastructure has been destroyed, people find a way to get by.

They fill in the gaps of people’s needs, finding small ways to deliver goods and services to the population at large. ‘Git my hustle on,’ as many say.

In this hustle, profit margins are wafer thin. Full days of work often produce just a few dollars, which in turn often gets spread out to family and friends in need.

During my eight months of living here, and poking around at all levels of society, I still remain fascinated by the micro-economy. So, I have been collecting info about how many people manage to ‘get their daily bread’ - another ism. [I will] feature some of the professions that interest me the most. [...]

Profession: Coconut Seller

Location: Roaming

How it works: Coconuts come to Monrovia packed into trucks and cars from villages all around the country. The outer husks have been hacked off with machetes, to reduce size and weight. Sellers are generally old women, who carry up to 25 or 30 on their head (which is psycho heavy), or young men who can carry up to 80 in wheelbarrows.

Every seller carries a machete, allowing them to split the coconuts for anyone who stops them as they walk through the streets. They wait patiently as buyers drink, split the coconut to access the meat, take the empty shell, and move on.

Cash: Street sellers buy them wholesale for around $10 LD ($0.14 US), or ‘2 for 15′ [$LD] at spots around the city. Coconuts generally retail for $20 LD. Meaning that to make a dollar, 7 coconuts must be sold - roughly 15 pounds of weight.

Variables and Dangers: Insanely sore neck, machete wounds.

Net Profit: For female sellers, they rarely earn $ 5 US /load. Some will take more than one load per day, but it is rare, as they often have families to tend to, and business can be slow.

Wheelbarrow men can earn over $10 US/day, but this kind of profit demands a 10 hour day.

Point of Reference: used T-shirt sold on the street costs $ 1 - 3 US

To read more job profiles, follow Myles Estey’s blog.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user usnico under a Creative Commons license.

U.S. funding for the IMF has become a heated issue. Photo: IMF

Chris Bowers took major exception to an article I recently wrote supporting U.S. funding for the IMF. I was motivated to write the article by the neocon rants equating money for the IMF to money down the drain — despite the fact that the IMF was bailing out countries that the U.S. would certainly not let fail, at a fraction of the cost of us trying to do it alone. As I wrote, that is an argument that I don’t consider very serious.

But some progressives in Congress also wanted to tie the IMF funding to specific changes in how the IMF conducts its business, with an eye toward more sensitivity to poor countries and greater transparency. I am very sympathetic to these goals, and this argument IS serious.

I think we should give the new Administration a chance to engage, however. It is sometimes hard to remember, but we are coming off of eight years in which the U.S. disparaged and belittled multilateral organizations and often ignored them. The Administration now, wisely, wants to reengage. From the IMF, the U.S. wants not only to continue to save countries from bankruptcy, but also to become a forum for examining China’s undervalued currency. In pursuing a broader agenda, the administration can and has pushed for reforms, with some success, and we should give that approach some time to work. It shows more respect for a multilateral process that involves many countries than does categorical U.S. demands. Moreover, if we attach hefty conditions, other countries might too, and that will complicate the whole process greatly.

Second, we are still in the throes of a once-in-a-century economic crisis. The IMF has already relaxed some of its conditions to ensure that it can act quickly and not cause additional social harm. But I fear that some of the new requirements that the members of congress want, like requiring Parliamentary approval for loan packages, could slow the process down too much at this juncture, and, in the end, cause more harm.

Finally, the U.S. has been pushing hard for underdeveloped countries to get more of a say in IMF decisions. That pressure has had resulted in a marginal increase in voice for the underrepresented, with the promise of more to come. The answer to the problem of badly-designed loan packages for poor countries is for poor countries themselves to have a greater hand in decision-making.

- Nina Hachigian

This post originally appeared on ThinkProgress.

There are more than 12 million adults and children around the world in forced labor, including those forced to provide sex. The United States has put 52 countries on a watch list, suspected of not doing enough to combat human trafficking. These countries could face sanctions unless they improve their records.

E. Benjamin Skinner, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, and author of “A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern Slavery,” joins Martin Savidge to discuss modern slavery and how the economic crisis is playing into the problem of human trafficking.

Members of the International Monetary Fund meet with officials in the Maldives.

The battle over America’s pledge of new funds to the International Monetary Fund is shaping up and will play out in Congress this week during the negotiations over the war supplemental. Recall that the G-20 nations agreed in April to boost IMF lending capacity by $500 billion.

This extra capital is necessary because, in an effort to stem the economic crisis, the IMF bailed out a number of countries such as Pakistan and Iceland that may have otherwise gone belly up. Now the IMF needs additional funds that it can loan to other countries on the brink.

Opposition is coming from both sides of the political spectrum. There is the usual neo-con fearmongering that this money is a “giveaway”—more on why this is silly below.

There are also progressives who argue, with reason, that the IMF should be less strict in its demands from poor countries because past IMF conditions on loans to developing economies often caused great pain and were ultimately unproductive. All sides are demanding greater transparency in the IMF’s lending practices and governance.

Much room remains for improvement at the IMF, but we need to ante up. Congress should deliver the funds we’ve pledged, while also keeping up the pressure for reform. Here are five reasons why:

1. The IMF extends our dollars. Our share of the additional $500 billion pledged—$108 billion—is less than 22 percent of the total. That means that for every one dollar we contribute, other countries are putting in about $3.50. Japan already signed an agreement with the IMF to provide its promised $100 billion, and their economy is at least as bad as ours, and much smaller. The amount we owe is significantly less than what we needed to bailout one U.S. company (AIG), and these are countries at stake.

2. We are going to pay one way or the other. Let’s be serious. We aren’t going to let Pakistan’s economy collapse, or for that matter Hungary’s, Romania’s, or Guatemala’s. The potential national security consequences of any of those countries failing are too dire, not to mention the ultimately higher economic costs to America. Better the IMF prop them up — as they have — than us shoulder an even higher burden in funds and hassle.

3. This is a chance to show leadership again. American economic leadership has taken a serious beating lately. The world blames us for this crisis. This is a chance to do the right thing when countries are in need and gain back some credibility as an economic leader. Let’s not be the last country to pay what we pledged.

4. China is increasing its influence at the IMF. That’s largely good, because it comes with an increased contribution from them, and the IMF is developing into a forum to talk about their undervalued currency. But America will want to maintain significant influence at the IMF, too. We can’t have leverage if we don’t pay up. China has committed $50 billion of the $500 billion total.

5. The IMF will pay us back. These are bonds we are buying. And they’ve got gold to back them up.

- Nina Hachigian

This post originally appeared at The Center for American Progress.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Presidency Maldives under a Creative Commons license.

Mojubaolu Okome, a professor of political science from Brooklyn College, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the forum and how the global economic crisis has impacted African countries.

Oksana Zagrebnyeva’s house in Lipetsk.

Russia has suffered massively from the economic crisis, going from 8 percent growth in 2008 to a 6.5 percent contraction this year. Unemployment has soard to 10.2 percent, a nine-year high. 

Oksana Zagrebnyeva of OpenDemocracy Russia shares her personal account of life in an industrial Russian town hard-hit by the economic slowdown.

Letters from Russia: Lipetsk

I moved to Lipetsk about a year ago.  It’s roughly 500 km south-west of Moscow.  [...]Today Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) carries on the 18th century Petrine tradition of the ironworks. The owner is Vladimir Lisin, one of the five richest men in Russia.  They are the main employer in the city:  they occupy a vast area of land and employ about 35,000 people.  On top of that many of their components are made to order in small and medium-sized Lipetsk factories, so that accounts for several thousands more jobs. 

Lipetsk and its region have felt the influence of the economic crisis more strongly than other cities and regions, because it’s a single-industry city and everything depends on NLMK.  They are short of orders, so their employees have felt the pinch too - many of them are not working a full day any more, some are working a short week and others have been retired or made redundant.  My friend’s mother worked has had her work cut back, so she’s earning less.  Her father worked in a factory which depended on orders from NLMK.  When the crisis started he was paid 4,000 ($130) instead of the usual 10,000 roubles ($324).  No explanation.  There are 4 people in that family, 3 are working.  By the New Year their total monthly income had dropped to  30,000 roubles ($971.5), half what it was before the crisis.  Many, though not all, have lost 30 - 50% of their income.

My husband worked at the Lipetsk Meat Processing Plant, where he was head of sales.  The enterprise ran on credit, as most of them do, and had no working capital of its own.  When the banks cut the credit line the directors started streamlining their expenditure by sacking people and cutting wages.  My husband was offered the possibility of working for 15,000 ($485.75) instead of 30,000 - or find another job.  His last working day there was 31 December.  What a way to start the new year!

[...]My husband and I live with his father in a block of flats built as temporary accommodation in the ’50s for workers at the Lipetsk Tractor Plant.

There are 8 flats in the block, which has been condemned - the pipes are in a terrible state, the roof is leaking and there are problems with the electricity. Lipetsk has dozens of buildings like ours: the people living in them are waiting their turn on the regional resettlement programme list. I don’t believe in miracles such as being resettled at someone else’s expense, so I decided to do some repairs to our hovel. It’s said that there’s nothing more permanent than the temporary and, as my mortgage dreams melted away in the crisis and I don’t want to take a flat and pay some unknown landlord rent, we going to put to rights what we’ve got.

On the whole I often think that we live in defiance.  In defiance of the crisis, the falling salaries and growing prices, in defiance of the fact that we can’t plan our budget.  And in defiance of everything I got married during the crisis - no pomp and ceremony, no banquet, just him and me.  During the crisis several of my friends have had babies and others (and I’ll let you in on a secret - me too) are planning to have them.  Some friends are intending to buy a house in the suburbs, others want a car and without any favourable credit facilities from the state.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

From the $787 billion stimulus package in the U.S. to China’s $586 billion, world governments are hoping that they can lay the groundwork for economic recovery. Some analysts say the worst is over.

In Japan, the downward spiral is getting steeper, with exports falling and companies slashing production. In the first quarter of the year, Japan’s economy shrank more quickly than at any time in the past 50 years. The country has pumped $154 billion in stimulus into the economy. 

With unemployment now at 4.8 percent, Brazilians of Japanese descent who were welcomed just 10 years ago as guest workers are now being offered money to take a one way ticket and go home.

Blogger “Peter” in Japan visits a town populated mostly by Brazilians and describes the hardships there: 

My daughter recently asked me if I could drive her to the nearby town of Oizumi so she could visit a friend who lived there, and I was happy to do it. In my 18 years here I’d never been to the “Brazil in Japan,” famous for having the highest percentage of nikkei Brazilians and Peruvians in the country. […]

It was certainly interesting to drive down the street and see all the businesses sporting Brazilian flags, and walking into the all-Brazilian convenience store was a good excuse to buy some interesting chocolates and something called Inca Kola. The people of the town are largely dependent on factory jobs at companies like Sanyo, and times are very hard for them right now, prompting the Japanese government to take the unprecedented step of offering financial assistance to any guest worker who wants to go home but who is unable to for economic reasons.

From Germany, where there are signs that the worst may be over, an anonymous comment on a forum reflects the continued suffering of the country’s worst recession since World War II:

I was made redundant, I have several friends in Munich that have been made redundant, no point going home cause the situation is just as bad there. The industry that I worked in is in freefall with more job loses to come. It is absolutely unbelieveable and very scary. After a masters degree and several years of experience at very good companies, I have very little chance of finding a job. It’s like someone pressed the reset button on the economy. 

In Spain, where new statistics say the country’s economy actually contracted by nearly 2 percent in the first quarter of 2009, unemployment has reached 17 percent. Blogger Alex in Spain describes his experience:

Here in Spain, unemployment has reached an all-time high. Back in March my part-time job had to cut out my English as a Second Language class because the government severely cut back on funding to adult education. Then yesterday was my partner’s last day at his job and he is now on the unemployment line.

In Africa, economies have been growing at a rate of six percent a year since 2000. But the head of the International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday that growth on that continent will be only 1.5 percent this year.  He called Africa “an innocent victim” of the recession and asked international donors to keep their aid commitments to Africa in the coming year.

Blogger “MrK” of “Zambian Economist” argues that aid is less important than economic reform: 

What is needed is fargoing nationalisation of industries. Reinvest profits from raw materials in other economic sectors, and the economies will grow. There really is a need for economic diversification, and using the mines is the way to do it. 

Economic reform, government reform, land reform, not more ‘aid’.

From Bahrain, blogger “Mahmood” describes how consumers have reacted to high vehicle prices:

There is an active campaign in Bahrain at the moment by consumers to force greedy car dealerships to reduce their prices. It’s apparently fashioned after a Saudi campaign which some say already bore fruit.

The essence of this campaign is to not buy cars, let the stock rust if need be, until dealers take active steps to make car prices in Bahrain comparable to world markets. 

Barbados is suffering from decreased tourism and mounting government debt. A blogger at the “Living in Barbados” blog reacts to the new budget announced by Prime Minister David Thompson:

I remember when I first got here most of the criticism I heard from Mr. Thompson, when in opposition, was that the economic ills, especially rising prices, could be put at the door of the government of Mr. Owen Arthur. Now that the hat has a new wearer he is quick to point out he was having to deal with ‘circumstances not of our making’, and much blame is laid on the world recession. I don’t have a problem with that observation, but I wonder what changed in the shifting of positions.

Much of the success in economic policy is about confidence and credibility. Barbados needs foreigners’ money and it comes in three main forms–from tourists, from those setting up and operating international businesses here, and from investors in real estate on the island. My own view is that the government did not see that nothing should be done to jeopardise any of those pillars especially in the current fragile economic conditions. People are fickle when it comes to putting their money to work abroad. Tough economic conditions in the UK, Canada and the US will crimp tourists arrivals and spending. Plans by the world’s economic ‘big boys’ to rein in what they call ‘tax havens’ have had Barbados and other countries with relatively low taxes scrambling to paint themselves as less harmful. But, I think the ball was missed in making foreign property investors less welcome, and I fear that once they turn their backs it will be hard to get them to change their minds.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user glennharper under a Creative Commons license.

Marcus Mabry, the international business editor of The New York Times, joins Martin Savidge to analyze the deepening economic downturn and provide a look at what comes next in the European recession.

President Alan Garcia of Peru. Peru’s GDP expanded by 9.8 percent last year — faster than China’s — but has slowed significantly.

The Latin American economy is expected to contract 1.5 percent this year as countries face losses from declining exports, tourism and remittances.

But while Iceland was called “the first political casualty of the global credit crisis” after its prime minister resigned, blogger Thiago de Aragão writes that in most Latin American countries, people seem to separate politics from their pocketbooks.

Thiago is the Latin American senior research associate at the Foreign Policy Center in London and he writes at Latin American Politican Analysis.

Latin America: Politics and Economics divided

Politically speaking, the impact of the international economic crisis is expected to be extremely relative in Latin America. Contrary to what happens elsewhere in the world, here political and economic issues are easily sifted apart. [...]

There are odd situations, such as Peru. Here, in spite of the economy’s best performance ever (which may change or plunge because of the crisis), president Alan Garcia faces one of the worst cases of popularity evaluation across the whole region. In Peru we now witness an overt cleavage between economy and politics that hadn’t been seen in Latin America for a while. The thriving economy has taken the Peruvians to unprecedented wealth levels, yet their president isn’t seem as someone capable of inspiring political and institutional stability.

In Brazil things are somewhat different. Both low-income and low-middle-class populations are now entirely catered for by the country’s economy. Since these ranks of Brazil’s population have subscribed to the notion that “politicians are all the same, they all cheat”, there is nothing to be worried about if the economy is in good shape. It isn’t that president Lula’s administration isn’t a reasonable one, but significant political advancements that are yet to be made (the political, tax and labor reforms) hardly affect the vast majority of the country’s population. This vast majority of people is quite content only to be able to plan ahead the purchase of, say, a household appliance in the beginning of the year, knowing exactly how many installments they will have to pay by December.

The Brazilian upper classes are the ones that care about political issues, specially those that affect them directly, i.e. the battles for the end of the CPMF, lower excise tax for cars etc. Issues such as education, health and crime rate are lost in the political limbo. The upper classes in Brazil can afford private schools, health insurance and safe neighborhoods. Because the low-income population is living their best economic moment ever, coupled to the fact that they lack political organization to demand improvements in such critical areas, things more or less are kept going by way of compromise.

Colombia, however, is a clear example of both political and economic advancement. The country’s economy is growing steadily, foreign direct investments increase year by year, industry leaders are constantly attracted by the country’s infra-structure modernization programs. Furthermore, there has been tremendous advancement in regard to Colombia’s worst political nightmare: the FARC. Nowhere has a government managed to reap good economic and political fruits and appraisals because of good seeds sown. However, it is important to acknowledge the mounting risk that this success can be adversely affected if the Colombian president attempts at running for a third term in office.

Except for countries drowning in social issues, such as Bolivia, in Latin America economic issues have an overriding role as far as a country’s stability is concerned. In Brazil, economic issues go hand in hand with everything else for the low-income population. Because for this part of the population, “if economy is right, then everything else is right, too.” In Peru we witness a dissension in opinion, in that “economy is well regardless of the president”, whereas Colombia as a whole, or at large, in any case, including the upper classes, perceives that both economy and politics are going very well.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Presidencia de la República del Ecuador under a Creative Commons license.