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Tag: informal economy;

Financial Crisis Worldwide (3): Bolivia

Photo by Archerten
Photo by Archerten

Door Ton SalmanHesitating at the doorstep — the impact of the global economic and financial crisis in Bolivia”

Financial and economic crises as the one currently haunting us, inevitably affect the whole world — we are too interconnected for anyone to escape its impact. The way the crisis lands in various countries and regions, however, differs considerably.

Take Bolivia. As a reminder: since early 2006 Bolivia is governed by its first indigenous president, Evo Morales. He attempts to pull through economic reforms, to strengthen the country’s sovereignty vis-à-vis external agents, and pursues reforms in favor of the Bolivian poor. In his political discourse he combines an ideological (‘socialist’) with an ethnic vocabulary, accusing the West of a history of exploitation of the South, and additionally charging Western political and economic models of being instigated by greed, by obsession for accumulation and expansion, and of neglect of the environment and the depletion of natural resources. The crisis, in his view, is a leaf out of one’s own book. This does, nevertheless, leave the question open: will the crisis hurt in Bolivia?

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