To Jeffrey Sachs, the glaring gap between rich and poor in Latin America is a major cause of the debt crisis that has racked the region. The boyish Harvard & economist, an adviser to debt-ridden countries from Bolivia to Poland, blames wealthy Latin elites for dodging taxes and arranging self-serving subsidies that have "sucked the blood" from many governments, forcing them to borrow heavily.
That blunt diagnosis is typical of Sachs, 34, an economics wunderkind who was a tenured professor at 29 and has become a champion of debt relief for developing countries. He first gained renown for his advice to...