The Brazilian history… good starters are this and this book.  On the latter one: if Brazil is thriving today, this is mainly thanks to Lula reaping the fruits of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s work as Brazil’s Finance Minister in the early 90s and then as president from 1995 to 2002.

Interesting is the below video on the expansion on Brazil’s territory from 1700 to today.  Two main points of interest:

1811:
Expansion of Brazil to the South.  Until then Porto Alegre and Florianopolis were “Spanish territory”
1821:
Further expansion Southwards, all down to the Rio de la Plata.
1828:
Uruguay
1839:
Juliana Republic and Riograndense Republic
1862:
Riograndense Republic abolished

Since the bite into Bolivia (treaty of Petropolis) in 1903, the Brazilian territory hasn’t changed.
Despite the many changes, Brazil hasn’t know any real wars worth the name, except for the “small troubles” down South in the early 19th century.

Tags: brazilian territory

El Pais was the first to nominate Lula as “personality of the year” (Spanish prime minister José Luis Zapatero called Lula “the man of which the world is fascinated”) and now Le Monda nominates Lula as “L’homme de l’année 2009“.

It’s the first time that Le Monde awards the nomination.  The newspapers refers to Lula’s past as union leader and his battle for social justice and the environment.  Le Monde claims that Lula changed the face of South America and made Brazil into superpower country.

More interesting than the article itself are the comments through which European FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) are dripping through.

Just look how he won the Olympic bid.  The IOC chose Rio de Janeiro on the basis of Rio’s strong technical bid and long-term aspirations of the future.  The IOC continues that the games will be “good for Rio de Janeiro”.
Let’s turn that upside down: showcasing Brazil through the Olympics could teach the world some important lessons.

Tags: lula da silva, lula homme de l'annee

For the first time in history, the Brazilian intrest rate is lower than 10%, the Banco Central lowered the rate to 9,25%.
Only since 2005 has the intrest rate slowly been decreasing towards 15% and below.

For the first time a whole generation of people will be able to finance the acquisition of a home.  Caixa Economica lowered this week the intrest rate to tariffs between 8,2 and 11,5% per year in the context of the Sistema Financiero de Habitacoa (SFH), which allows people to finance their proper home at a maximum sales price of 500.000 R$.  This is a decrease of 10,58% compared to the rates of April.

Also Banco do Brasil lowered it’s intrest rate for real estate financing last week from 8,0% to 8,4%.   They finance upto 80 to 90% of the sales value.  Banco do Brasil also lifted the finance period from 300 months (25 years) to 360 months (30 years).  The minimal financing amount has been highered to 150.000 R$ and the maximum amount is now 450.000 for loans in the SFH program (1,5 million R$ in case of a normal bond).

Also interesting is that Brasil is now financing 10 billion US$ to the IMF  (see article below).

Tags: brazil intrest rate, selic

In 2004, when we entered Brazil, the unemployment rate was 11,5%.  In th US, the unemployment rate was 4,6%.
The lowest Brazilian unemployment rate was in December 2008, when it was 7,2%.  But Q4 is in Brazil typically a strong quarter and the Q4 2008 one was an exceptional one.  Since then, the Brazilian unemployment went 1,7% up to 8,9%.  The US lowest unemployment rate was 4,6% in 2007.  Since then it went up 4,8% to today’s 9,4%.

Graph from Globo:

Tags: unemployment