SANTIAGO de CHILE, 10 May 2010: – There is no new international order in sight after the crisis. The only thing certain is that the pattern of development that caused it can no longer continue, stated Brazilian economist Maria da Conceição Tavares during a lecture at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile.
Tavares delivered a lecture titled The Effects of the Global Financial Crisis in Latin America and the Lessons of the Brazilian Case to an audience of diplomats, academics and representatives of international organizations.
Professor of the Universidad Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) and professor emeritus at the Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Tavares’s vast background has made her a decisive reference in Brazil’s cultural and intellectual circles.
ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena welcomed Maria da Conceição Tavares and highlighted her personality and contribution to the development of Latin American economic thought.
– The sharpness of her ideas, her clari-ty in identifying real problems beyond established theoretical frame-works and the pro-vocative intelligen-ce of her argu-ments have perme-ated several gene-rations of Brazili-an and Latin Ame-rican economists, said Bárcena.
Tavares outlined each of the stages she called “the rise and fall of financial globalization”. After describing the causes that led to the origin of the crisis in the United States in 2007 – which would later spread throughout the world in 2008-2009 – she reflected on its main consequences.
– The crisis has created a new international ‘disorder’, in which the economic situation continues very unstable, with some bubbles continuing to burst and financial crashes in different places, as has occurred in Greece over the past few weeks, stated Tavares.
Tavares stressed that consumption and public spending should not continue to be the motor of growth in developed countries:
– The financial disorder and the ideological confusion may go on, but what cannot continue is the same development pattern that provoked this crisis, she said.
Markets were organized in not a very “canonic” form of capitalism, in an unsustainable manner, tied to ghost loans and toxic derived instruments that affected international lending and caused strong restrictions to financing.
With regard to Latin America, Tavares acknowledged that the region faced the crisis better than other parts of the world, with only a moderate fall in growth and employment. In order to foment a more solid recovery, she emphasized investment in infrastructure and implementing a public system of social protection with universal coverage.
– This is why the proposals ECLAC will take to its Thirty-third session -to be held in Brazil from 30 May to 1 June- in the document Time for equality: closing old gaps, blazing new trails are crucial, she said, and added: – This document suggests long-term policies that should be implemented in order to move towards development with equality.
