Development and External Debt in Latin America: Bases For a New Consensus; Latin America's Debt Crisis: Adjusting to the Past Or Planning for the Future

Two fine symposium volumes on Latin America's economic and financial crisis of the 1980s and how to escape the debt trap. The Feinberg and Ffrench-Davis volume, based on papers prepared for the Inter-American Dialogue, mainly provides the views of Latin American economists about the nature and causes of the debt crunch and how it has affected particular countries; the Pastor collection, based on presentations made at the Carter Center, includes policy proposals by economists, bankers and political figures from both the United States and Latin America. Both volumes suggest that a consensus is emerging among economists (and some bankers and political figures) that Latin American recovery will require economic reforms in the region and renewed credit as well as some measure of debt relief from the industrial countries, but that most U.S. commercial bankers and political leaders still resist that conclusion.