The Inter-American Dialogue’s quarterly off-the-record meeting of leading economists focusing on Latin America. 

Agenda

• The global economy after the Greek deal and Chinese currency devaluation.
• The US economy: can it help lift Latin America?
• Latin America as a whole: enduring downward trend, short-term reversal, or diversion between strong and weak economies?
• Brazil’s crisis and regional implications.

The economic tea leaves do not bode well for Latin America. Economists gathered at the August quarterly meeting of the Dialogue’s Latin American Economies Roundtable agreed most indicators suggest a difficult period ahead for the region.

While the global economy has generally behaved predictably since the last LAER meeting—which anticipated a neither “particularly bad nor particularly good” year ahead—the outlook for most Latin American economies has grown worse. Continuing fallout from the end of the commodities super-cycle, persistent fiscal challenges, and political discontent continue to erode growth rates. All told, the region faces a challenging economic landscape both in the short and medium-term.