US economy starts to get a Latin feel

Behind the pain of the last 12 months lies a typical refinancing crisis - of a form well-known to emerging market investors - rather than a pure solvency crisis. Has America become the new Brazil? The cause was tight global liquidity, largely brought on by policy errors. The over-hyped American housing market may have triggered last August's collapse, but the underlying reasons run deeper. The fundamental cause is the mismatch between the runaway productivity of financial capital, led by innovation on Wall Street, and the skidding productivity of Western industrial capital, forced by over...