If Manuel Lopez Obrador wins the upcoming election …. “Mr Calderon said last week that his rival’s proposals would bankrupt the country. But in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Rogelio Ramirez de la O, Mr Lopez Obrador’s Cambridge-trained chief economic adviser, insisted that his proposals were “do-able”. The new social programmes would cost an extra $8 billion (£4.3 billion) a year – and could be paid for, he said, by cuts in bureaucracy and better tax collection. But if Mr Lopez Obrador’s sums prove faulty, the pain of economic collapse will be felt at the border. Some 500,000 Mexicans cross illegally into the US each year – a number that would soar if the economy goes into freefall.”