OBELA Analysis

As the world economy moves towards a new normality, a stage of profound international transformations is approaching. In the face of these changes, what can international relations and our Latin American countries expect after the first 100 days of his term in office?

Biden presented Interim Strategic National Security Guidance (INSSG) and his Build Back Better (BBB) agenda comprised of three parts: rescue, recovery and reconstruction. Together, the blueprint comprises federal spending of more than $6 billion dollars, the largest in its history.

The BBB agenda, despite its huge budget, and the INSSG project, will face the structural limits of the U.S. economy and the accelerating global transformations led by China.

Globally, the use of cryptocurrencies is on the rise. In Latin America there has been an increase in the use and awareness of new digital currencies.

There are different ways of looking at the causes of the increase in the use and acceptance of cryptocurrencies in Latin America: accessibility due to their anonymity; the security they generate among citizens due to the economic crises in their countries; and the incentives they offer to evade institutions.

The depreciation of the dollar due to expansive monetary policies is leading to this currency being abandoned as a reserve currency in some countries and, above all, is in the process of opening a large market for these cryptocurrencies.

The crisis unleashed by COVID19 in 2020 has been novel. It has brought with it a collapse in GDP and tax collection, an increase in average reserves of 3.8% and a rise in commodity prices.

The current economic crisis is not an external crisis but a fiscal one. The debt is a domestic problem while at the same time it combines a generous disposition of foreign currency to meet international commitments.

What has led to the misunderstanding of the problem is that the debt/GDP ratio jumped between 2019 and 2020 as a result of the contraction of the denominator - this was accompanied by an increase in fiscal deficits that have generally been financed within countries with the result of a healthy external sector and a complicated internal problem.