ON AUGUST, 1932 RICARDO JIMÉNEZ OREAMUNO, PRESIDENT OF COSTA RICA No. 8 N MAY 8, 1932, Dr. Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno was for the third time inaugurated President of Costa Rica. In 1910 and again in 1924 he had been the people's choice, and this year, in the midst of the difficulties with which Costa Rica, like every nation, is confronted, his fellow citizens once more elected "Don Ricardo," as he is affectionately called, to be their leader for the next four years. This third term is an unprecedented distinction to a citizen of Costa Rica. President Jiménez is also the only man ever to have held the three highest offices in the country's gift-those of President of the Congress, Chief Justice, and President of the Republic. To understand why these marks of confidence have been bestowed on President Jiménez one has only to glance back over his long and fruitful career, which began in 1885 with his appointment as Minister to Mexico. Later he was Minister to Nicaragua and El Salvador and delegate with the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary to the Central American Congress in 1888. First called to the cabinet in 1889 as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he has likewise held the portfolios of the Interior, Public Works, Public Instruction, and the Treasury. As a lawyer he won deep respect and esteem, both in private practice and as the head of the National School of Law. Now, at the age of 73, he places at the command of the country his ripened experience, fine intelligence, and high civic ideals. From colonial days public service has been a tradition in the family of President Jiménez; one of his ancestors, the famous explorer Juan Vázquez de Coronado, was Alcalde Mayor of Costa Rica in 1563, dying in 1565 as he returned to be governor; a maternal grandfather, Señor Francisco María Oreamuno, was President of the Republic, and Don Jesús Jiménez twice occupied the office which his son now holds. TH INTER-AMERICAN FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC STABILITY By WILLIAM Manger, Ph. D. Chief, Division of Financial Information, Pan American Union HE past few years have witnessed a severe disruption of the economic and financial structure of the nations of the world. Nowhere have the effects of such changes been more severely felt than in the Republics of Latin America. To a degree greater than most countries, these nations are influenced by forces operating in the world at large, and fundamental changes in finance, industry, and commerce in other regions are strongly reflected in the economic situation of each nation of the American Continent. The Republics of Latin America are primarily producers of raw materials, which are disposed of in the industrialized nations of Europe and in the United States. Manufacturing is still in its early stages in most of the countries, and in the sale of the products of their fields, their mines, and their forests, they are subject to the many varying influences governing prices in world markets. Over most of these influences they exercise little or no control, and in this respect they are unfortunate. For countries whose national income is so largely dependent on the production of raw materials are subject to a greater extent than are industrialized nations to fluctuations in economic activity. The entire economic life of the nation revolves around the income derived from the disposal of these raw materials in the markets of the world, and an inability to make such disposal, or a marked diminution in the proceeds derived from the sale of these products, caused by either lack of demand or severe drop in prices, has its repercussions in every phase of national economic activity. In the Republics of Latin America, therefore, exports are not merely intended to meet the cost of imports. The revenues required to administer the government are derived principally from the duties levied on goods entering and leaving the country; and when, as in recent years, the value of the foreign trade suffers a shrinkage in value of anywhere from 40 to 50 per cent, many governments find themselves in financial embarrassment, unable to meet the expenses of administering the country. Being economically new, only a few of the countries have achieved a basis of economic development sufficiently broad so that when one source of income declines others may be tapped. Closely related to the drop in foreign trade has been the virtually complete stoppage in the flow of international credit. Like all nations with relatively undeveloped natural resources, the countries of Latin America have been for years past, and will continue to be for many years to come, the market for the investment of large amounts of capital. Because of their comparative newness and lack of economic development these funds must come from abroad; and the cessation in this flow of credit during recent years, at the very time when it was most urgently needed, has had consequences but little less disastrous to the countries of Latin America than the shrinkage in exports and imports. DECLINE IN FOREIGN TRADE The foreign trade figures of the Republics of Latin America afford eloquent testimony of the effect on the national economy of the general stagnation that has come upon world trade during the last three years, and of the severe drop in commodity prices which has but served to aggravate this condition. Taking 1929 as a point of departure, and giving a value of 100 to the import and export trade of that year, the changes in the foreign commerce of these countries during the two subsequent years are graphically set forth in the accompanying table. An examination of these statistics reveals that the foreign trade of all the countries has suffered a terrific decline in value. In a number |