Azerbaijan, Baku, 30 May /corr. Trend A.Badalova / The regional efforts in Latin America will not be equivalent to the successful endeavors of the European Union, the Expert of the U.S. Brookings Institution, Colin Bradford, said.
"The politics behind this effort to assert regional preeminence will be forced to face the economic realities of the Global Age," a former chief economist at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Colin Bradford, reported to Trend via e-mail on 30 May.
To strengthen economic and political integration of its countries, Latin America creates regional organization UNASUR which can be semblance of the European Union.
"It won't hurt to establish a Banco del Sur but it will not change the world either, and a Latin American currency surely will not be able to hold its own against the dollar, the Euro, or the yen," Bradford said.
According to the American expert, there is a trend in Asia and in Latin America to move away from a reliance on the premier global institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, for infusions of international finance either for long term development or for short term balance of payments assistance.
"That is fine, especially since the global economy is relying on these capital account surplus countries to offset the triple deficits being run by the United States in consumption greater than domestic savings, government expenditures great than public revenues, and (inevitably) imports greater than exports," Bradford said.
The American expert said that the idea that these regional efforts to create zones of economic influence that can somehow insulate them from global influences is far feteched.
"All of our countries need to realize that all the major challenges now are global, and as a consequence can not be contained within single regions. There is a role , not necessarily a preminent role, that global institutions need to play not so much in providing resources but in being the convener, the global table around which national officials from major countries and major regions gather to discuss, debate and decide on how to manage global issues," Bradford said.
The primary currency of the global institutions is ideas rather than money. None of our countries, whether rich or poor, super powers or minor powers, can ignore the global dimension of challenges or the global conversation about how to manage those challenges, the American expert said.
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