Last month, Jorge Botti, the head of Fedecámaras, Venezuela's business federation, explained that unless the government supplies more dollars to pay for imports, shortages -- from food to medicine -- would be inevitable. "What we will give Fedecámaras is not more dollars but more headaches," replied acting president Nicolas Maduro, the heir apparent to the Chavista regime (and Hugo Chávez's vice president).

On the heels of the U.S. Federal Reserve's announcement last month that it would launch a new round of quantitative easing--so-called QE3--by purchasing an additional $40 billion in mortgage bonds per month, Brazil accused the Fed of inciting a global "currency war" by adopting "protectionist" policies. Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega suggested that an expansionary U.S. monetary policy would trigger volatile capital inflows into emerging markets like Brazil, causing currencies to appreciate and damaging trade. Mantega is "correct by saying that in the short run QE3 leads to pressures for the appreciation of currencies across the emerging markets space, which is stronger than the benefits that these countries are going to get from stronger U.S. growth," says Bernardo Wjuniski, a visiting professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and a senior analyst for Latin America at Medley Global Advisors. However, Wjuniski says, Mantega is "definitely exaggerating the impact that not only QE3 has on the Brazilian currency, but also the impact that the Brazilian currency has on the local manufacturing sector and on local growth."

DRUGS, extortion, kidnapping, people-smuggling: Mexico’s organised-crime multinationals have a keen eye for diversification. A growing sideline is stolen oil. In 2011 outlaws made off with 3.35m barrels of fuel belonging to Pemex, the state-run oil monopoly, up from 2.16m in 2010. The thefts are reckoned to deprive the company of more than $1 billion per year. Pemex’s profits pay for a third of the federal government’s budget.

SANTIAGO – During a visit to Rio de Janeiro last year, US President Barack Obama told a cheering crowd that Brazil is the country of the future no more. “For so long, you were...told to wait for a better day that was always just around the corner,” Obama said. “Meus amigos, that day has finally come.”

The Mexican economy has recovered somewhat from a scorching recession imported from America, but is still hobbled by domestic monopolies and cartels

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave these remarks at the second U.S.-Colombia High-Level Partnership Dialogue meeting in Washington DC on May 31, 2011. Secretary Clinton and Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin also gave these joint remarks on the same day.

The second article in our series on economies that exemplify global trends looks at Colombia’s rising fortunes

WHEN last September government forces seized computer hard drives and memory sticks belonging to “Mono Jojoy”, the military commander of the FARC who was killed in an assault on his camp, officials said they had struck a gold mine of information about the inner workings of Colombia’s main guerrilla group. It turned out that they had also gained data about real gold mines under the FARC’s control, as Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, revealed this month.

Panama and the U.S. will sign an agreement to exchange tax information this month, as the Central American nation seeks to clear the way for lawmakers in Washington to approve a free-trade pact.

Greece’s economy may be poised for a recovery after a rescue plan was agreed on by the euro region and the International Monetary Fund, Argentine Economy Minister Amado Boudou said.