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Latin Lessons by Hal Weitzman book signing


Hal Weitzman will be at After-Words books on February 16, 2012 from 6:30 p.m. giving a talk and signing copies of his book Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering (Hardback, Wiley, $25.95).  Wine reception following.

In recent years, the U.S. economy has fallen on hard times, with persistently high unemployment, stagnant wages, and a fast-expanding national debt burden. At the same time, South America has been booming, with rapid economic growth, falling jobless rates and decreasing indebtedness.  In Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering, Financial Times reporter Hal Weitzman explains how, after many decades of destructive political and military interference and disastrous economic and trade policies, many South American countries have had enough of the American way of doing things. Thanks to demand from big emerging economies, which has caused commodity prices to surge and cash to flow in to the continent, most South American governments have become increasingly “resource nationalistic” and have ramped up social spending to meet the needs of the poor and the indigenous, causing poverty levels to drop – at the same time as poverty has been on the increase in the United States.

Combining sharp wit and great storytelling with trenchant analysis, Hal Weitzman examines how America “lost the South” and argues that if the United States is to find a new role in a world of emerging superpowers, it must reengage with Latin America. Hal Weitzman explores the mistakes the United States has made in Latin America—and the high price it will pay for them.

Hal Weitzman has been on the staff of the Financial Times since 2000, and is currently Chicago and Midwest bureau chief. He first joined as an editor on the FT’s Op-ed desk, was named Americas News Editor in 2002, and was the newspaper’s Andes bureau chief from 2004 to 2007. He was based in Lima but traveled extensively, reporting from Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Chile. As well as the FT, his reporting from the region also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, New Statesman, The Irish Times, The Australian and Jane’s Foreign Report. Originally from Wales, he was educated at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Oriel College, Oxford; and Leeds University.

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