Héctor Torres

Jul 2, 2024 | cigionline.org | Hector Torres |Héctor Torres

Claudia Sheinbaum’s landslide victory in the recent Mexican presidential election owes much to her promises to deepen incumbent Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s welfare programs. Yet she will also be inheriting a fiscal imbalance equivalent to 5.9 percent of Mexico’s GDP, . If Sheinbaum holds to her electoral promises, Mexico’s fiscal deficit may worsen, confronting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with a dilemma: accept a reputational cost or trigger a regional crisis.

Mar 13, 2024 | cigionline.org | Hector Torres |Héctor Torres

Argentina is, yet again, in a state of crisis. Its new president, Javier Milei, took office on December 10. He inherited a bankrupt government, an overvalued peso and a spaghetti bowl of informal exchange rates flourishing under the watch of a reserve-stripped central bank (indeed, with about US$15 billion in negative reserves). Once upon a time, Argentina was rich. From 1890 to 1950, its per capita income was similar to that of Western Europe (albeit considerably less evenly distributed).