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

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

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

Since October 2007, world market cap fell from 62,45 trillion US$ tot 25,5 trillion in March.

Bespoke investments made a interesting remark Interestingly, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) account for 13.53% of world market cap, while the UK, France, and Germany account for 13.37%.  Maybe it’s time for the BRICs to no longer be considered emerging markets.

The market cap of Brazil is now 2,42% of the world market cap, how long will it take Brazil to surpass Germany’s 2,82% Market Cap?

Today the Bel20 fell with -0,45% while the Brazilian MSCI Brazil index rose 2,85%.  Since March 2009 MSCI Brazil yielded us a  +42% return.

Tags: MSCI Brazil

IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) just published the April unemployment figures updates.
Unemployment in Brazil was 8,6% before the crisis (March 2008), it even went down to 6,8% in Decembeer 2008, when Brazil’s economy was topping (the GDP growth Q4 2008 that quarter was 6,8%).  Since then the unemployment raised to 9,0% in March.  In April it decreased to 8,9%; this means that in April 106.000 new jobs were created.

Also crucial is the differences between the North and South of Brazil.

Unemployment March – April in the North (read: higher then Rio de Janeiro) of Brazil:
- Salvador: 11,9% to 12,4%
- Recife: 10,6% to 10,6%
- Belo Horizonte: 6,6% tot 6,8%
Unemployment March – April in the South (Rio de Janeiro and down) of Brazil:
- Sao Paulo: 10,5% to 10,2%
- Rio de Janeiro: 6,9 to 6,8%
- Porto Alegre: 6,4% tot 6,2%

By way of comparison: Belgium currently has an unemployment rate of 11,8%.  This rate will raise to 15,2% by 2011, which is an absolute recored since WWII.

Also interesting is to see the distribution of the Brazilian workforce:
45% are workers
12,5% are employees
7,6% are military of public functionaries (in Belgium this is 18,6%, more than the double)
18,6% are independents working for their own account (in Belgium this is only 17,2%)

True, many of these independents in Brazil are modest to low earners.  But that is no different in Belgium: more than a third of the independents in Belgium live below the poverty treshold as this KUL study of Johan Lambrecht and Ellen Beels shows.

Tags: employment brazil