June 2nd, 2009 - one response
As predicted,the Brazilian Real went through the 2.00 US$ psychological barrier today.
Yesterday the commercial balance of Brazil for May was announced: again a big surplus, this time of 2,6 billion US$. Projections for 2009 vary now between 25-30 billion US$ trade surplus.
The Brazilian Central bank is buying dollars to prevent further appreciation of the Brazilian currency, but these efforts are not strong enough.
I believe Brazil will start taking measure to prevent further appreeciation of the currency:
- Start taxing short-term investments in fixed income
- Establish a minimum period for short term investments in equity market and fixed income investments
- Introduce some kind of waiting line where money would stay on hold, waiting to acquire local assets
Clearly it’s good that the Central Bank sits on top of this so that the very good export results don’t get jeopardized by appreciating currency.
Tags: brazilian real
June 2nd, 2009 - no responses
Wikipedia published an interesting overview of the per capita use of alcohol in each country. The figures are measured in liters of pure alcohol per year per capita and the data comes from the World Health information.
Belgium ranks high on the list on number 22, with 10,06 liter pure alcohol per person.
Most European countries rank extremely high in the list. Even the United States ranks high on place 43 with 8,51 liters per capita.
Brazil (and most Latin American countries) rank very low on placce 82 with 5,32 liters per capita.
Now you know it for a fact: Belgians are drunkmen drinking twice as much as the average Brazilian.
Tags: Brazilian society
June 1st, 2009 - no responses
End November 2008, Brazil’s president Lula da Silva had an approval rate of 70%. Not many presidents in the world ever had such a rating.
His approval rating fell somewhet in Q1 2009, but bounced back this May to all-time highs as Brazilians grow confident how Brazil is coping with the crisis.
Lula approval rating is now 69%. Reports on this can be read in Reuters and on the Boston Globe.
Also worthwhile reading is this article of last week where the Financial times gives president Zuma of South Africa the following advice:
“Zuma shouldlearn from Lula”.
On December 19th of 2007, 18 months ago, this was exactly the statement that I made when I wrote the following article:
“Zuma: choosing the Lula or Chavez scenario?”
Tags: lula da silva
May 31st, 2009 - no responses
On April 2009, Standard & Poor’s, Fitch Ratings and the Canadian DBRS included Brazil in the category of countries which are “investment grade”.
Now also Moodys is giving Brazil the status “Investment Grade”.
At the same time, The economist reports about a Brazilian rating agency in Sao Paulo, SR rating, which is rating down the US from “AAA” to “AA”.
Tags: brazil in investment grade
May 30th, 2009 - no responses
Bespoke investments plotted the below graph of the stock indexes of the BRIC countries versus the S&P 500.
China and Brazil both never dipped negative and yield respectively 44,6% and 39,7% returns until today. S&P 500 rarely went positive and yielded nothing (0,22%) since January 2009.
Tags: BRIC countries, MSCI Brazil
