Latin America’s commodity cushion

This is one of Buenos Aires’s main shopping boulevards but recently it’s been less crowded with tourists. That’s bad news for local merchants like this man. He says the absence of Mexicans and Europeans are being heavily felt. Originally the market meltdown wasn’t supposed to land hard in Argentina. Like other South American leaders, President Kirchner seemed almost gleeful about the opportunity to offer words of advice towards the western world. Argentina even recently ran a foreign import surplus and few citizens were invested in the gyrating local stock market. with fewer than 5% of homes being bought with mortgages, the chance of a banking collapse seemed non-existent. This economist says of course no country is an island so this economy will be affected but more in terms of a slow down. Some economists have cut their growth projections in half for the upcoming year because price of commodities like wheat and soybeans have fallen about 40% since July, which in turn has led to massive layoffs and the shelving of a planned bullet train. And with fewer tourists expected, tourism rates are expected to go down by at least 25%.