CAMBRIDGE: Across Latin America, pressures to engage with the US to increase regional integration are mounting. Mexico’s incoming president Vincente Fox has made free labor market integration an important item on his agenda. Argentina hopes to achieve a free trade agreement as a way of moving closer to the US, at least in the eyes of investors, and thus shed the risk premiums on capital that have been imposed recently. In Asia, in the wake of the financial crisis of 1997, Japan is aggressively promoting regional economic integration. Swap credit lines have been negotiated between regional central banks; a free trade pact has been offered by other Asian economies to a reluctant Japan. Monetary integration is being urged on the South Koreans, who are terrified by this attempted Japanese embrace.
CAMBRIDGE: Across Latin America, pressures to engage with the US to increase regional integration are mounting. Mexico’s incoming president Vincente Fox has made free labor market integration an important item on his agenda. Argentina hopes to achieve a free trade agreement as a way of moving closer to the US, at least in the eyes of investors, and thus shed the risk premiums on capital that have been imposed recently. In Asia, in the wake of the financial crisis of 1997, Japan is aggressively promoting regional economic integration. Swap credit lines have been negotiated between regional central banks; a free trade pact has been offered by other Asian economies to a reluctant Japan. Monetary integration is being urged on the South Koreans, who are terrified by this attempted Japanese embrace.