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After experiencing the world’s worst economic contraction during the COVID War, Latin America faces a future of galloping inflation, slow growth, and higher interest rates that will keep tens of millions of people in poverty for the foreseeable future, according to The Wall Street Journal.
That collision of negative forces “is a recipe for political upheaval and mass exodus to the U.S. and Europe,” analysts told the WSJ.
GDP growth across the region will average just 2.4 percent this year, economists have predicted, the world’s slowest pace, and a dramatic contrast from last year’s 6.8-percent recovery.
South America specifically will grow just 1.8 percent in 2022, analysts have forecast.
Almost a third of the jobs lost to the COVID War have yet to return to Latin America, while extreme poverty—defined as an income of less than $1.90 per person per day—continues to rise.
In 2021, 86 million Latin Americans suffered from extreme poverty, compared to 81 million in 2020, according to United Nations figures, a stark reversal of gains made from 2003 to 2019, when the proportion of Latin Americans living in poverty dropped from 45 percent to 30, the WSJ noted.
Before the COVID virus invaded, about 70 million lived in extreme poverty.
Last year saw a record number of migrants apprehended at the U.S. southern border, including a record number from South America.
TREND FORECAST: We have long highlighted the forces linking rising prices, lower quality of life, mass migration, and social unrest through articles including “Angry. Desperate. Outraged” (28 Apr 2014), “Human Waves” (4 Aug 2016) and “IMF Follows Celente: Great Depression 2.0” (21 Jan 2020).
The sequence has played out through Latin America’s history: poor economic policies, government corruption, foreign intervention, corporate monopolists, crime, violence, and other forces combine to make life untenable for the working population.
Some take to the streets, leading to repression or revolution; others leave. Indeed, one of our Top Trends for 2021 was “The New World Disorder,” (9 Dec 2019), which emphasized this growing wave of discontent.
For those countries, now burdened by even more massive debt (see “Economic Shock Wave to Hit Poor Countries,” 25 Jan 2022), the future looks even more turbulent, with massive protests, rising poverty, and political instability in store.
For the U.S., Europe, and other regions beset by waves of economic refugees, the future also is darker: the growing wave of migrants will require services, even if only to return them to their home countries.
As we have long forecast, as the wave of immigrants rises so too will anti-immigrant, anti-establishment political movements.