Argentina has been having real problems over the past few years. Thie economy collapsed and a lot of middle class people- teachers, lawyers, scientists and managers lost their jobs.
The government made a couple of strategic errors with their money that led to this crisis, and part of the problem was the IMF and the United States policies towars lending money. Argentina had experience huge inflation problems for years, and decided to peg their currency to the US dollar in the early 90's.
This stabiized the economy and attracted a good deal of specualtive wealth from around the world, which stimuilated the Argentine economy and made everyone happy for a while. But as Asia began to devalue their currencies against the dollar, the Argentine costs of doing business in Dollars became increasingly uncompetitive.
Unlike the US which can keep printing dollars, Argentia could not. The foreign speculators got out while the getting was good and the economy collapsed.
Argentina had been borrowing money from the IMF to keep things going, and this debt, denominated in Dollars, made it very hard to pay back. They defaulted on their loans and told the IMF to take a hike. Now, no-one is lending them any money, so they have a hard road ahead of themselves.
Much of South America is in a simillar situation, they're outcompeted by China and Asian labor, and in debt to the IMF and Europe and the US. Like N. America, they have an abundance of natural resources and plenty of arable land. Their primary problem is corrupt leadership, but America is a convenient, and somewhat reasonable excuse for their problems.
The US continually attempts to exploit the S. American countries and they're sick of it. The US idea of a free trade area between Alaska and Argentina is dead as far a Venezuala, Brazil and Argentina are concerned. They're probably right to reject such a deal now. They should work on becomming self sufficient and build their own factories- not foreign ones. There's no real reason why they couldn't become the most prosperous people on the planet, other than their lack of proper economic policies and stable currencies.
