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 Economists from Brazil are forecasting that Latin America's biggest economy will fall into the worst recession since 1992 as companies scale back output amid the first global recession since World War II.
Analysts covering Brazil expect 2009 GDP to shrink 0.30%, down from a previous forecast of a 0.19% drop, according to the median estimate in an April 9 Central Bank survey of about 100 economists released Monday.
Industrial production had its two biggest monthly declines since 1992 in January and February as the global recession choked demand. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government has responded by cutting taxes on car sales and construction materials while offering subsidies to homebuilders and promising to build a million houses.
"We are acting to ensure that the strength of our domestic market will compensate for deficiencies in external markets," Lula said Monday in his weekly radio program Breakfast with the President, broadcast nationwide. "Step by step, we're managing to take care of the economic situation."
Policy makers also forecast that the Central Bank will cut the SELIC benchmark interest rate for a third straight time to a record low 10.25% on April 29, according to the median forecast in the central bank survey.
In spite of the negative prospects it was also confirmed that Brazil could contribute with US$ 4.5 billion to the International Monetary Fund. Finance minister Guido Mantega had anticipated the announcement last week. He said the resources would go toward helping make credit available to other emerging market countries.
The move shows the country's finances are strong, Mantega said at a news conference. "Now we are just entering the club of IMF creditors," he said.
Brazil will make up to US$ 4.5 billion available to the IMF, on top of the US$ 10 billion it already pledged at a G20 meeting, Mantega said, adding that "it will be very unlikely" the IMF will draw on all the funds.
Brazil's inclusion into the IMF financial transaction plan is likely to be made official by the end of the month. The move is not expected to affect Brazil's international reserves but only its make-up, since the country would use part of its reserves to acquire the IMF Special Drawing Rights. Brazil's international reserves stood at US$ 201 billion last week.
Between 1998 and 2003 Brazil borrowed more than US$ 40 billion from the IMF but paid all its outstanding loans to the multilateral organization in 2005.
Mercopress
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The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
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).
catch a cold then Brazil would catch pneumonia. Now the US economy has crashed and Brazil has a 0.3 percent
decline...how is this possible?
Brazil giving money to the IMF...speaks loudly to the relative strength of the Brazilian economy during a global
economic crisis. It's fine to say "I told you so" this many years later, so I just let the truth reside in the archives
of this forum.
Try to remember my warnings about the US "exporting inflation". This is the real danger to Brazil and the other
developing nations. Dollar-denomination investments are the trap that will fuel inflation throughout Latin America.
We all know that inflation is the enemy of economic stability and the stimulant of social unrest. Be very careful!