The global economy will confront serious challenges in the months and years ahead, and looming in the background is a mountain of debt that makes markets nervous—and that thus increases the system's vulnerability to destabilizing shocks. Yet the baseline scenario seems to be one of continuity, with no obvious convulsions on the horizon.

During Mexico’s 2012 presidential election, many political pundits voiced their fears that the PRI’s return would bring a resurgence of the country’s less democratic past. According to new polling da…

A view of the San Alberto gas plant (David Mercado/Courtesy Reuters). The New York Times recently reported on a boom in Argentinean oil and gas discoveries. My colleague Shannon K. O’Neil explains t…

A view of the San Alberto gas plant (David Mercado/Courtesy Reuters). Last December, Argentina’s major oil and gas company YPF discovered some 4.5 trillion cubic feet of unconventional gas in the so…

An elderly Guatemalan woman rests before leaving Bolivia from Santa Cruz (David Mercado/Courtesy Reuters). For those of you that haven’t seen this yet -- the Economist’s Americas editor Michael Reid…