|
 After a rocky morning that sent stocks tumbling down over the 10% mark, which triggered a circuit breaker that shut down the market for half an hour, the Bovespa, Brazil's stock exchange, was able to reduce losses and close this Friday, October 10, at 35.609 points or 3.97% down.
It was the seventh time in row of shares slides. Trading for the day was 5.4 billion reais (US$ 2.35 billion).
With these results the Brazilian market now has accumulated 20.01% of losses this week, 28.12% this month of October and over 44% in the whole of 2008. The only respite to the fall this month occurred on October 1st.
Among the heavier losers were Gafisa (-14%), JBS Friboi (-14%), Embraer (Brazilian Aircraft Manufacturer) (-10%) and Renner stores (-10%). Among the most traded shares, oil company Petrobras fell over 7%, while mining firm Vale retreated 1%.
As for the dollar, the repeated interventions by Brazil's Central Bank weren't enough to contain its surge. The greenback ended this Friday at 2.314 reais, 5.27% stronger than the previous day.
During the trade session the BC intervened four times attempting to rein in the American currency. In the first one the bank sold dollars from the Brazilian reserves for 2.27 reais. There was also a swap auction and two more direct sales at a rate of 2.31 reais per dollar.
Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defended today, in a press conference to news agencies, at Planalto Palace, the seat of the government of Brazil, the reformulation of Central Banks worldwide, as this is a good moment for the world to readjust itself. He said that, even before the crisis that is being lived, he had defended this point of view in meetings with several heads of state.
Lula recalled that whenever Brazil was in crisis, the voices of the financial system that is breaking said that the country needed to adjust its fiscal policy. However, the Central Bank of Brazil is now stabler than it has been at almost any moment in history. Lula stated that Central Banks must review their leverage margin, which is always very high due to reality.
"Nobody can negotiate what he does not have, and the transfer of funds in virtual form, when only paper is sold, is the cause of the financial crisis that is now taking place," said the president of Brazil.
Lula added that despite the global financial crisis he hopes that Brazil may have profits and attract investment by international companies. "Brazil may be a good place for them to make their investment and have the necessary profit to help their headquarters pay their debts abroad," said the Brazilian president.
Lula guaranteed that, despite the crisis, he is going to proceed with the government social programs and with the works of the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), which includes federal investment in several areas of the Brazilian economy.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
Experts are looking at the patterns and coming to this evaluation.