***** October 20, 2009 SouthAmerica: Since you brought up that article from 3 years ago - here is the correct link to the article. I hope you will enjoy reading it. âWhile the American Dream Is Outsourced Brazil Drives the World into the Futureâ Written by Ricardo C. Amaral Wednesday, 06 September 2006 http://www.brazzil.com/component/content/article/171-september-2006/9684.html Hits: 11,806 Comments: 63 .
Billdick: The flood of dollars into Brazil, caused by US excessive borrowing and printing too many, is in part just trying to preserve owner's purchasing power as dollar declines. This FDI has been hard on Brazil's exporters. In some sense the US's effort to save its self is damaging Brazil. Thus the new 2% IOF is just a "self defense" measure. ***** October 20, 2009 SouthAmerica: The Brazilian government should do everything on its powers to discourage this short-term "dollar carry trade" game, because at the end of the day this game is not good for the long-term health of the Brazilian economy. Ben Bernanke is throwing free cash by the hundreds of billions of US dollars at obsolete too big to fail US financial institutions, and when he is forced to reverse that policy, because of a collapsing US dollar, we are going to have the biggest international monetary crisis that the world has ever seen. We have reached the end of the line for the US dollar, but the usual suspects want to continue the same old game going that they had been playing for a long time. And they donât understand that âThe Party is over.â The British still are trying to hang on to the Pound Sterling to this day, and they donât understand that the âParty has been overâ for the Pound Sterling for a long time - and at that time they still had an international monetary system based on the gold standard. In the last 37 years we have been first in the âUS dollar standardâ for a while then the system evolved into the current âConfetti standardâ or wherever name you prefer to call the current international monetary system. When you have an international monetary system based on Confetti â the international monetary system is ready for a massive international monetary crisis and for a Confetti meltdown. Keep in mind that over 70 percent of the Confetti ever created by the US government is flying today around the world completely outside of the power and influence of the US government; including the US treasury and the Federal Reserve. China's foreign exchange reserves has jumped another US$ 318 billion dollars in the last six months for a total of $ 2, 270 billion dollars. And today it is estimated that about 70 percent of China's total foreign exchange reserves is invested in Confetti. .
***** October 21, 2009 SouthAmerica: The smart money is getting out of the US dollar (ahead of the herd) and that is inflating the value of other currencies such as the euro and the real. But when the herd realizes what is already happening then they get spooked and you have the stampede and the final US dollar meltdown. All we have had so far is just a small decline of the US dollar - no big deal. .
. April 19, 2010 SouthAmerica: When my last article was published also by the RGE Monitor, a fire storm broke out from the Financial Times (UK) to the most important website in Brazil â (UOL). On Thursday afternoon RGE Monitor published a copy of my article, an article was posted on the Financial Times (UK) regarding my article, and immediately, a front-page making headline about my article was published by (UOL) in Brazil. Immediately I received an email from Brazil mentioning my article. Early on Friday morning my article had been removed from the RGE Monitor website because of the over- reaction that the article caused from the UK to Brazil. The RGE Monitor posted a note why they had to remove my article from their website. I am sorry that my article caused such a problem to Nouriel Roubini, since they attacked my article by attacking Mr. Roubini and RGE Monitor. The ironic part of this fiasco is that Mr. Roubini still have the change of being right, by making the decision of publishing my article on RGE Monitor and let the developing discussion prepare the financial markets for the events that I have described on my article and in the following comments to that article. The events (chaos and anarchy) that happened in May 2006 in Sao Paulo were only the preview of things to come â and thereâs a real possibility that one of the options described on my article and comments can materialize in the near future with severe social and economic consequences to the Brazilian economy. Anyway, we have been discussing that article and 100 comments have been posted so far on the comments section of that article at Brazzil magazine, and you can read it at: By the way, some idiot made a posting suggesting that I had made a bet against Brazil to profit from the confusion that might be developing in Brazil in the coming months. I can assure everybody here in the USA, and also in Brazil, that I would never do such a thing â profit in any way by betting against my country: Brazil. ***** Here is the link to my latest article about Brazil, which was published on Brazzil magazine. *** The Brazilian Formula for Success - Dictatorship Written by Ricardo C. Amaral Brazzil magazine - Tuesday, 13 April 2010 http://www.brazzil.com/component/co...azilian-formula-for-success-dictatorship.html ⦠The Brazilian formula for success includes periods of dictatorship, and Brazil had three periods in its history when Brazil benefited from being under a certain form of a government: benevolent dictatorial regime. .
. May 8, 2010 SouthAmerica: Congratulations to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Time magazine has just named President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ââ¬â Brazilââ¬â¢s incumbent and charismatic leader the world's most influential leader. President Lula has been doing a lot of things that are right for Brazil on the long run, and here is another area that I wrote many articles on this subject and I am glad some people in Brazil has common sense and they are implementing a very essential plan to protect the future of Brazil as an independent country. ***** ââ¬ÅIs Brazil Developing the Bomb?ââ¬Â By Hans Rühle SPIEGELnet GmbH May 7, 2010 Brazil has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but experts suspect it may be working on a nuclear bomb. The country is allowed to legally enrich uranium for its nuclear submarines, but nobody knows what happens to the fuel once it is on restricted military bases. In October 2009, the prestigious American periodical ââ¬ÅForeign Policyââ¬Â published an article titled ââ¬Å The Future Nuclear Powers You Should Be Worried About.ââ¬Â According to the author, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Burma, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela are the next candidates -- after Iran -- for membership in the club of nuclear powers. Despite his interesting arguments, the author neglected to mention the most important potential nuclear power: Brazil. Nowadays, Brazil is held in high esteem by the rest of the world. Its president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has become a star on the international stage. "That's my man right here," US President Barack Obama once said, in praise of his Brazilian counterpart. Lula, as he is known, can even afford to receive Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with all honors and demonstratively endorse his nuclear program, for which Iran is now ostracized around the world. Lula da Silva's self-confidence is indicative of Brazil's claim to the status of a major power -- including in military terms. The military claim is reflected in the country's National Defense Strategy, which was unveiled in late 2008. In addition to the mastery of the complete nuclear fuel cycle -- which has since been achieved -- the document calls for the building of nuclear-powered submarines. Close to Building a Bomb It sounds harmless enough, but it isn't, because the term "nuclear-powered submarines" could in fact be a cover for a nuclear weapons program. Brazil already had three secret military nuclear programs between 1975 and 1990, with each branch of its armed forces pursuing its own route. The navy's approach proved to be the most successful: using imported high-performance centrifuges to produce highly enriched uranium from imported uranium hexafluoride, so as to be able to operate small reactors for submarines. At the appropriate time, the country's newly acquired nuclear capabilities were to be revealed to the world with a "peaceful nuclear explosion," based on the example set by India. The 300-meter (984-foot) shaft for the test had already been drilled. According to statements by the former president of the National Nuclear Energy Commission, in 1990 the Brazilian military was on the verge of building a bomb. But it never came to that. During the course of Brazil's democratization, the secret nuclear programs were effectively abandoned. Under the country's 1988 constitution, nuclear activities were restricted to "peaceful uses." Brazil ratified the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean in 1994 and, in 1998, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Brazil's flirtation with the bomb had apparently ended. Under Lula da Silva, however, this flirtation has now been reignited, and the Brazilians are becoming less and less hesitant about toying with their own nuclear option. Only a few months after Lula's inauguration in 2003, the country officially resumed the development of a nuclear-powered submarine. Even during his election campaign, Lula criticized the NPT, calling it unfair and obsolete. Although Brazil did not withdraw from the treaty, it demonstratively tightened working conditions for inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA). The situation became tense in April 2004, when the IAEA was denied unlimited access to a newly built enrichment facility in Resende, near Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian government also made it clear that it did not intend to sign the additional protocol to the NPT, which would have required it to open previously undeclared facilities to inspection. In mid-January 2009, during a meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a group of nuclear supplier countries that works toward nonproliferation by controlling exports of nuclear materials, the reasons for this restrictive policy became clear to attendees when Brazil's representative did his utmost to fight requirements that would have made the nuclear submarine program transparent. 'Open to Negotiation' Why all this secrecy? What is there to hide in the development of small reactors to power submarines, systems that several countries have had for decades? The answer is as simple as it is unsettling: Brazil is probably also developing something else in the plants it has declared as production facilities for nuclear submarines: nuclear weapons. Vice President José Alencar offered a reason when he openly advocated Brazil's acquisition of nuclear weapons in September 2009. For a country with a 15,000-kilometer border and rich offshore oil reserves, Alencar says, these weapons would not only be an important tool of "deterrence," but would also give Brazil the means to increase its importance on the international stage. When it was pointed out that Brazil had signed the NPT, Alencar reacted calmly, saying it was "a matter that was open to negotiation." How exactly could Brazil go about building nuclear weapons? The answer, unfortunately, is that it would be relatively easy. A precondition for the legal construction of small reactors for submarine engines is that nuclear material regulated by the IAEA is approved. But because Brazil designates its production facilities for nuclear submarine construction as restricted military areas, the IAEA inspectors are no longer given access. In other words, once the legally supplied enriched uranium has passed through the gate of the plant where nuclear submarines are being built, it can be used for any purpose, including the production of nuclear weapons. And because almost all nuclear submarines are operated with highly enriched uranium, which also happens to be weapons grade uranium, Brazil can easily justify producing highly enriched nuclear fuel. Even if there is no definitive proof of Brazil's nuclear activities (yet), past events suggest that it is highly likely that Brazil is developing nuclear weapons. Neither the constitutional prohibition nor the NPT will prevent this from happening. All it would take to obtain a parliamentary resolution to eliminate these obstacles would be for Lula da Silva to say that the United States is not entitled to a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Americas. If that happens, Latin America would no longer be a nuclear weapons-free zone -- and Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world would be finished. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,693336,00.html#ref=rss .
Luiz Inacio Lula da Who? Funny how Time Magazine can be the nail in the man of the year's coffin. Once again no doubt.
SouthAmerica: Reply to Kiwi trader And Barack Obama was number 4 on "Time Magazine" latest list of the most influential people in the world. In my opinion, in terms of long-term economic impact the most influential leader in the world is the leader of China. .