Gustavo Petro offered a press conference in Bogotá | Photo: EFE/ Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda

Bogota, October 21 (RHC)-- Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the United States of ruining almost all the world's economies in pursuit of protecting itself, regardless of what happens to other countries.

"The United States is practically ruining all the economies of the world," said the President during a speech in the municipality of Urabá Antioqueño (northwest), in the framework of the binding regional dialogue, a government initiative to get closer to the communities.

Petro also affirmed that countries such as the U.S. and France take measures without considering the consequences they generate, highlighting the damage these policies cause in Latin America.  "They make decisions to protect themselves alone, sometimes without thinking about what will happen through their measures; the economy of Latin American nations is being drained," said the Colombian president.

And Gustavo Petro added that the conflict in the Old Continent is generating the economic ruin of Europe.
"And after that war, the European economy collapses.  Powerful Germany is going into recession and, who would have thought, England, which was once the colonial power, the British Empire, is now falling apart in a deep economic crisis," he said.

On the price of the dollar, which reached 4,800 Colombian pesos this Wednesday, beating a new record, the president commented that the conflicts and the winds of world recession put the price of the currency to be on the rise and keep on that trend, explaining that it is not something that happens only in the country, but in several Latin American nations.  "Our currencies are all falling, not only the Colombian peso," he said.

Finally, Petro invited Latin American countries to build a joint plan to respond to the economic crisis.
"In Colombia, we are threatened by economic stagnation, we are threatened by high-interest rates, which the Central Bank of the United States, the (Federal) Reserve, has decreed for its own economy and takes away the capital of South American countries, leaving us empty.   Of course, these are real threats, but we have a strength on which to build our response; it is time for all Latin American countries to get together in the face of the world crisis and build our own agenda."