Some Latin American countries have made some less-than-orthodox decisions during the crisis. What does the IMF have to say about them? For the most part, Nicolás Eyzaguirre, the IMF’s director of the Western Hemisphere department, was, if not supportive, not critical either.

Asked at a presser during the IMF spring meetings about Argentina’s decision to pay back its debt using central bank reserves (a saga which felled one resistant central bank governor), Mr Eyzaguirre responded: “Each country decides on its own sovereignty how it’s going to decide with debt management, so we don’t have an opinion on that.”

He was also emphatic that the Fund had not objected to Brazil’s decision to tax capital inflows. “Our first reaction Read more