With oil prices off their highs, his country in a recession and prices soaring, President Hugo Chávez devalued the bolivar and "vowed to fight speculation and price increases that could result from the devaluation." At Caracas's middle-class Sambil shopping mall, lines at cashiers reached 50-deep. Carmen Blanco, a 28-year-old accountant, waited to buy a 42-inch flat-screen television she doesn't need because she already has one at home.

On a visit to Argentina this week, I found the people much more frustrated, angry and skeptical about their collective future than at any time in recent years. Contrary to what one might think, the general sense of hopelessness is not due to the economy. Argentina has sailed through the world economic crisis relatively unscathed thanks to high commodity prices, and economists project a growth of at least 4 percent this year. Rather, it's because Argentines see no way out for the massive political corruption that seems to be condemning this country to lagging increasingly behind some of its neighbors -- especially Brazil and Chile -- and keeping it from drastically reducing poverty and crime rates.

Google this week is taking two dramatic steps to try to catapult devices using its Android mobile operating system into stronger competition with Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry in the battle for supremacy in the super-smart-phone category. Google's Nexus One is the first Android phone that may make Apple nervous because it does a few things better than the iPhone, Walt Mossberg says. Additionally, the phone will be sold untethered to specific carriers.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cracked the door open a bit more to the idea of raising interest rates if a new financial bubble emerges. He also mounted a vigorous defense against critics who say it was the Fed's low-interest-rate policies over the past decade that caused the last housing bubble. Instead, he said, the problem was lax regulation, which permitted banks to issue a slew of exotic mortgages that households later had trouble paying.