> Actually, Stiglitz agrees with that one as well:
>
> http://doc.politiquessociales.net/serv1/Stiglitz-version120603.pdf
Key excerpt:
"Advocates say: yes, growth in the 50's, 60's, and 70's was strong. But it was not sustainable. Yes, it was true, that that growth was not sustained. But was it inner forces that led to the end, or a shock from the outside-- the sudden, unexpected, and unprecedented increase in interest rates in the United States--which made the Latin American debt unsustainable? That the increase in interest rates should have had such an impact itself was as much a failing of international capital markets and the global financial regime as it was of Latin America. Well functioning capital markets would have had the advanced industrial countries bear the risk of interest rate fluctuations. One would have expected, in any case, the sophisticated bankers of the advanced industrial countries would have done a risk analysis, showing that if interest rates increase, the debt would almost surely be unsustainable, and therefore they would have limited borrowing, and thereby the countries' exposure. One would have thought that the Federal Reserve Board, with all of its sophistication, would have taken into account the full ramifications of its raising interest rates to almost unprecedented levels. But no, none of this occurred: debt contracts forced the poor borrowing countries to bear the risk; Western banks did not perform the appropriate risk analysis, and not just because they were expecting a bailout. (Indeed, some of the Western bankers responsible for the irresponsible lending got promoted, not demoted: they had demonstrated their aggressiveness in lending, and that was what was rewarded.) The Fed was focused on inflation; when it raised interest rates, it paid scant attention to what it would do to America's financial system (it effectively bankrupted the S & L's, which had long term fixed income assets with variable rate liabilities; it would take almost a decade for the American taxpayers to pick up the multi-hundred billion dollar tab [7]), let alone what it would do debtors abroad. Its claim was a simple one: it was not within its mandate to worry about impacts on the rest of the world!
"But the economic leaders of the advanced industrial countries did not want to take full responsibility for these failures; it was easier, politically far more palatable, if they focused on the failings within Latin America, and unfortunately, there were easy prey. There were inefficient and corrupt state enterprises, high inflation, large fiscal deficits. Yet, for all of these problems, growth in the "pre-reform regime" was almost twice as fast as it was under the so-called reform regime.
"There is, of course, no sure way of testing the alternative hypotheses: was it a shock from abroad or failing at home that brought on the lost decade? Indeed, both may play a role, and there is no simple way of "parsing" out blame precisely. But in the next section, we shall attempt to argue why I believe that most of the blame lies with the interest rate shock imposed on the region from the U.S. Latin America, like the rest of the world, was buffeted by the oil price shocks of the 70s, and it weathered these shocks remarkably well, far better than other regions. But arguably, it did so in an unsustainable way, relying on capital inflows (the recycling of petrodollars). It seems implausible that there was a sudden increase in corruption at the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s that brought down the continent. The simpler and more persuasive explanation is that it was the sudden change in interest rates that brought a sudden end to growth. Even if there had been no corruption, and state enterprises had been fully efficient, it is likely that most of the countries would have faced a crisis.
[7] For an account of the episode, see, e.g. Kane [1989].