Rodrigo Vergara, governor of the Central Bank of Chile, said in a speech on December 10 that Latin America had suffered from a similar sovereign debt crisis to that playing out in the eurozone, but despite economic stagnation throughout the 1980s, the crisis did eventually yield some benefits.

Speaking at a joint seminar of Eurosystem and Latin American central banks, Vergara said easy credit in the 1970s had led to unsustainable government and private borrowing throughout Latin America, leading