From: How alike are Brazil and US? - CSMonitor.com

Image via Wikipedia

One trip to Brazil is all it took to shake me from my ignorance and think about Brazil in a completely new way. Brazil was eerily similar to the US in many ways. The size, cultural diversity, nationalism, geographic diversity, sophistication. How its size and population have driven it to a very inward looking company with an well established domestic trade.

From Christian Science Monitor, the following:

"Brazil is no different from many countries in that there is a love-hate relationship with the US. But the two nations are very similar.

Both are continental-sized nations, inhabited by Europeans who subdued the local indigenous populations and built colonial economies on the backs of African slaves. Large wilderness spaces still remain.

Both have citizens who are open and friendly, but not very worldly.

Both are societies in which individualism is more marked than collectivism. The people are creative. Consumerism is king, and owning a car is not just vital, but a status symbol.

Owning a gun is considered another inalienable right."

Read Full Article - Click Here

Domestic Dynamics: Why Latin America's 'New Resilience' Will Keep Growth in Reach - Knowledge@Wharton

Domestic Dynamics: Why Latin America's 'New Resilience' Will Keep Growth in Reach - Knowledge@Wharton

Besides hailing from the same region, what do Brazil, Panama and Colombia have in common? When it comes to the economic recovery, these countries -- along with Chile, Uruguay and Peru -- have become the stars of Latin America. Each of them has stood up to the crisis with what the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) calls a "new resilience," paving the way for counter-cyclical policies without impairing fundamentals. According to the OECD's "2010 Latin American Economic Outlook," inflation-targeting in these countries has been particularly effective in building confidence-enhancing institutional strength.

In contrast, the recession and the fall in commodity prices in the early part of 2009 exposed weaknesses in a group of countries with leftist-leaning governments -- namely, Argentina, Venezuela and Ecuador. Each of them has pursued unorthodox economic policies and suffered from institutional frailties. Yet those hardest hit by the downturn in Latin America have been the countries with the closest ties to the U.S., namely Mexico and many of its neighbors to the south in Central America and the Caribbean. Not only is the U.S. their key market for goods and services; weaker remittances sent by immigrants working in America have also had a damaging effect.

Where does that leave the region as a whole? After contracting around 2% in 2009, it is expected to grow 4% in 2010 -- that is, stronger than developed markets but weaker than Asia, according to the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Although that doesn't come close to the 5% levels of the previous four years, there's plenty of reason for optimism.

Read Full Article

They Killed My Lawyer | Foreign Policy

Image via Wikipedia

They Killed My Lawyer

A story of Putin's Russia.CEMBER 22, 2009

Sergei Magnitsky was our attorney, and friend, who died under excruciating circumstances in a Moscow pre-trial detention center on Nov. 16, 2009. His story is one of extraordinary bravery and heroism, and ultimately tragedy. It is also a story about how Stalinism and the gulags are alive and well in Russia today.

Because Sergei is no longer alive to tell his story, I feel it is my duty to tell it for him. I am not a writer or a journalist, but a fund manager at Hermitage Capital Management. I ran what was the largest investment fund in Russia. Sergei was our Moscow-based outside counsel who worked for the American law firm Firestone Duncan.

Read Full Article - Click Here

Related articles by Zemanta

• Top 5 Nat'l Security List Misses a Few (dailykos.com)

Stopping in a hurry | The Economist

Stopping in a hurry | The Economist: "A number of carmakers already have or are introducing automated-braking systems. Germany’s Daimler uses a radar-based one in some of its Mercedes-Benz vehicles. Called Distronic, it also operates at high speed and adjusts both braking and acceleration to maintain a constant distance from other cars. If a collision seems likely a warning is given. When the driver puts his foot on the brake pedal the system automatically applies the optimum pressure required to avoid hitting the car in front. If the driver fails to respond, the brakes come on automatically.
Staying on the road

These so-called “intelligent” vehicle-safety systems have the potential to make roads a lot safer"

Economist.com: The World in 2009 - Latin Drift

After five years in which Latin America’s economies have averaged 5% annual growth with generally low inflation, they face a severe test of their new-found resilience in 2009. Subdued consumption in the rich world will squeeze exports and commodity prices, and finance will be harder to find. Countries with diversified exports and sound policies will be better placed to ride out the storm than those, such as Venezuela and Argentina, that have squandered their commodity windfalls and spurned private enterprise. Politically, tougher times will coincide with, and contribute to, the start of a tentative shift away from the left.


Of the region’s two big economies, Brazil will continue to do better than Mexico, but neither will do well. Softening commodity prices will erode Brazil’s trade surplus (and cause further depreciation of the real), but the diversity of its export markets and the vigour of domestic consumption will keep growth below 3% (down by more than two percentage points from 2008). With a presidential election due in 2010, Brazilian politics will be dominated by preliminary jockeying over candidacies, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the social-democratic president, seeking to transfer his own popularity to his chosen successor, probably Dilma Rousseff, his chief of staff.

read full article here

Thomas Friedman: Obama's Big Call

Barack Obama is possibly going to have to make the biggest call of his presidency — before it even starts.


“A great judgment has to be made now as to just how big and bad the situation is,” says Jeffrey Garten, the Yale School of Management professor of international finance. “This is a crucial judgment. Do we think that a couple of hundred billion more and couple of bad quarters will take care of this problem, or do we think that despite everything that we have done so far — despite the $700 billion fund to rescue banks, the lowering of interest rates and the way the Fed has stepped in directly to shore up certain markets — the bottom is nowhere in sight and we are staring at a deep hole that the entire world could fall into?”

If it’s the latter, then we need a huge catalyst of confidence and capital to turn this thing around. Only the new president and his team, synchronizing with the world’s other big economies, can provide it.

“The biggest mistake Obama could make,” added Garten, “is thinking this problem is smaller than it is. On the other hand, there is far less danger in overestimating what will be necessary to solve it.”

Thomas Friedman: What we can do

What we can do now, ....said the Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, co-author of “The Broken Branch,” is “ask President Bush to appoint Tim Geithner, Barack Obama’s proposed Treasury secretary, immediately.” Make him a Bush appointment and let him take over next week. This is not a knock on Hank Paulson. It’s simply that we can’t afford two months of transition where the markets don’t know who is in charge or where we’re going. At the same time, Congress should remain in permanent session to pass any needed legislation.