The conventional wisdom in most developing countries is that the world will be less capitalist, and less U.S.-centered, once the economic crisis is over. In reality, only one part of this wisdom may hold.

Judging from the talk in the corridors of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank here this past weekend, the post-crisis world will be marked by a long-term decline in U.S. consumption habits, forcing emerging countries to become more competitive to maintain export levels.

Even if the U.S. economy begins to recover next year, as most economists predict, the United States will become a more frugal place, and somewhat less of the world's economic engine. It will take many years for U.S. consumers to resume buying cars, computers or plasma TVs the way they used to, economists say.

For Latin America, this means greater difficulty exporting to the U.S. and Europe, fewer foreign investments, less tourism and fewer family remittances.

Some countries will compensate by exporting more to China, India and other emerging economies. Still, China and India will also become somewhat smaller, and more demanding, economies than in recent years.

In the end, the Latin American countries that will emerge strongest from the crisis will be those that have access to credit markets, don't overtax their exporters and are most productive, economists at the meetings said. In bad times, investors go to safe places.

"Disciplined, market-friendly countries like Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay will recover," said Ricardo Hausmann, a Harvard economics professor. "Neo-populist countries with high taxes on exports and no access to credit markets, like Argentina, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, will do poorly."

This line of thinking is opposite to what critics of capitalism said at the previous weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. There, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his followers said the recent U.S. moves toward greater state regulation of the economy proves that capitalism is on its way out. My opinion: The world will be less U.S.-centered, but not necessarily less capitalist.

Sure, there will be a U.S. shift toward greater state regulation to prevent financial bubbles. But populist leaders forget it was precisely this financial bubble that caused the artificial world expansion that allowed their countries to grow rapidly without becoming more competitive.

Populism is the offspring of good times. Now that the pie has shrunk everywhere, Latin American countries will need to be more competitive in a more frugal world.

Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald.