For the past 10 years David Wyss has been the chief economist at Standard & Poor's where he's charged with forecasting the financial future and divining the whims of the market.

Before entering the private sector, Wyss was a senior staff economist with the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board and economic advisor at the Bank of England.

Sought after by policymakers and the media, Wyss will be in Miami Nov. 15-17 to give the keynote address to the 43rd Annual Assembly of the Latin American Federation of Banks, which is expecting 1,500 bankers from almost 50 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Wyss (no relationship to this reporter) recently took time out of his schedule to talk to The Miami Herald about the Latin American rebound, inflation and the benefits of the weak dollar.

Q. There's the old adage that when the U.S. economy sneezes, Latin America's gets a cold. For the most part that hasn't happened this time. What has made the difference?

A. Mexico certainly has got a cold but South America, by and large, has been hurt by this, but not nearly as much as usual. There are a couple of reasons for this. They are not quite as dependent on the U.S. market as they have been historically, particularly because commodities have become much more of a global market, where China in particular has become a much bigger player. Also some of the Latin American countries have managed to get their house in order and are not as dependent on the rest of the world, or particularly the U.S., as they were 20 years ago.

Q. Did the region learn lessons from the crisis of the 1990s or is it mainly a changing geopolitical situation?

A. Asia has become a more dominant player just because China has been growing 10 percent a year. Grow 10 percent a year and you become a much more important player in the world economy. China has also been reaching out more and more to Latin America because China is resource hungry. And they are doing their best to grab resources from everywhere.

But Latin America did, to some extent, get its house in order. It's not as dependent on the importation of foreign capital as it was 20 years ago. And the financial and banking systems are more stable than they were 20 years ago.

Q. By many accounts the recession is over. When it will it start to feel that way?

A. A lot of the numbers are turning around but they are not the ones that primarily affect the guy on Main Street. Lets face it, the bottom line for most people is `Do I have a job and will I have one next month?' We need to see some positive employment numbers and I think we may see that sometime by the end of the year. Even more important is for the unemployment rate to start coming down. Unfortunately that's a ways off. I think we are in for a very slow, gradual recovery. The unemployment rate will probably continue to rise until next spring. We will have lost over 7 million jobs by the time this is over. Because this recovery is slow it will take at least two years, maybe three years to make up for that job loss. I am expecting the unemployment rate to remain 8 percent or above through 2012.

Q. What's the risk that we could slide back into a recession once the stimulus funds dry up?

A. I am looking at it at about 4 to 1 against. Not as long of odds as you would like to see. A couple things could go wrong that could turn this into a double dip and shove us back into recession. One is oil. We are happy now because oil is still half of what it was at the peak last summer. But given what is going on in the Middle East it wouldn't take much to send that right back up to $150 a barrel. Another thing is the financial markets. We are seeing credit markets easing up. That's good news. But is there something else that could go wrong? Is there another shock that could hit the financial markets and send them back down? Is there another failure, for example, of some major international financial institutions? I don't have any on my list of suspects right now, but AIG wasn't really on my list of suspects last summer.

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