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 After a gray Tuesday, which saw the Brazilian stock suffer its worst tumble in four months, the Bovespa, São Paulo's Stock Market showed some light recovery with the Ibovespa, the Bovespa's main index going up 0.28%. The fall the previous day had been of 2.88%. The market closed this Wednesday at 65,485 points.
The main responsible for the upswing was the great performance of companies linked to raw material, like Petrobras and Vale.
Investors are now attentive to the decision to be taken later today by the Copom, Brazil's Monetary Policy Committee, which is expected to announce the new Selic, Brazil's basic rate of interest.
On Tuesday, Brazil's stock market suffered one of its worst one-day plunges and the currency sank after the government imposed a tax on foreign investments in local stocks and bonds. The Bovespa dropped 2.88% to 65,303.11, after closing at its strongest level since June 2008 the previous session.
The decline in the index was the biggest since it lost 2.5% on August 17. The real meantime slid 2.1% to 1.7547 per dollar, the lowest in two weeks.
Finance Minister Guido Mantega announced Monday the government would charge a 2% financial transactions tax on foreign investments in Brazilian stocks and fixed-income securities in a bid to prevent the country's currency from strengthening further.
But Bovespa also announced plans to press the Brazilian government for alternative ways to curb gains in the currency. The levy, higher than a 1.5% tax scrapped a year ago that didn't cover stocks, will hurt Brazilian investors and small- and medium-sized companies, according to Carlos Kawall, chief financial officer of Sao Paulo-based BM&FBovespa.
"We need to do everything we can from now on, talking to the government, getting support from everyone who sees that this is something that is definitely faulty and could be altered," Kawall, a former Treasury Secretary who served under Mantega in 2006, said during a conference call.
International investors, who account for about a third of Bovespa's stock trading, will likely buy US depositary receipts, punishing smaller Brazilian companies who can't afford the costs of listing overseas, Kawall said. The fact that money raised through ADRs is seen as direct investment and isn't taxed, while local capital raising will be subject to the levy, is one of the "inconsistencies" in the regulation, he said.
Mantega said on Monday that the measure seeks to curb gains in the Real, which has strengthened the most of any major currency this year on the back of higher commodity prices, a credit rating upgrade from Moody's Investors Service and forecasts for faster economic growth.
The tax will reduce the efficiency of Brazil's capital markets and "divert" money needed to finance the country's economic growth, according to a statement signed by BM&FBovespa and groups representing Brazil's pension funds, publicly traded companies and investment banking industry.
"So who gets hurt? We get hurt and that's what markets are suggesting today," Kawall said on yesterday's call. "Local small- and medium-cap companies get hurt because they cannot deal with the cost of issuing ADRs. The local investor gets hurt because they might have less liquidity here over time if this measure prevails".
Bzz/Mercopress
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We don't discriminate people's sexual orientation, that is irrelevant here, he's just trying to make a point based on his previous relationship... 
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.
Never ever forget my motto:
In these troubled times, old friends have to keep each other informed.
After watching the news on the TV tonight, I am beginning to understand why Augustus is beginning to get pissed off more and more with Chavez e Cia.
Remember that 20 year cycle?