Economy, Brazil | featured news

Leaders of the five BRICS nations fueling global economic growth plan the creation of a development bank in a direct challenge to the World Bank that they accuse of Western bias.

Brazil has had a tough two years. This last one in particular has been rough. A crime wave swept Sao Paulo, the nation’s largest city, towards the end of the year. But more importantly, a country that wants to be the country of the future, with all the amenities and a stable economy, has seen its confidence dwindle a bit. This is not the Lula years, in reference to popular president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The nation that will hold the FIFA World Cup in just two short years and later the Summer Olympics in 2016 is scratching its collective heads. How did Brazil go from one of the biggest economies in Latin America, to be usurped by Mexico now as measured by investor appetite and losing the No. 6 global economy position to the U.K. in less than a 12 months.

The global economy is in the worst shape since the dark days of 2009. Six of the 17 countries that use the euro currency are in recession. The U.S. economy is struggling again. And the economic superstars of the developing world - China, India and Brazil - are in no position to come to the rescue. They're slowing, too.

The economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China account for 20 percent of the world economic output, and rising. That’s up four fold in the last decade, according to a report released yesterday by the International Monetary Fund. Despite the growth, problems in the core economies had made the post-2008 world a difficult one for the big four emerging markets.

For a country that’s faced the worst economic recession in a generation, the U.S. is doing marvelously well by comparison to every major economy except for maybe China. GDP growth, still around 2 percent and expected to end the year close to that, is better in the U.S. than it is in Brazil, a country which grew China-style in 2010 at 7.5 percent. Once the shining start of the Latin American economies, Brazil is now at stall speed.

Brazil's central bank lowers its forecast for economic growth to less than half of last year's, partly blaming the slowing global economy.

As his global teleconference broke up in disarray on September 11, 2001, a top economist at a U.S. investment bank began to ponder what the attacks on the United States might tell him about the future shape of the world.

According to Brazil’s Ministry of Sports calculations, the FIFA World Cup in 2014 is going to be a cash cow for the country. The nation’s economy is forecast to grow by at least $70 billion as a result of its hosting the World Cup, the Brazilian Ministry of Sports said July 6 in a statement. The figure is based on the country’s investments in private and public investment in infrastructure, heightened consumption, increased activity in the services sector and, of course, tax collection.

President Obama arrived in Brazil Saturday for his first trip to South America, a five-day tour intended to underscore economic ties to the region.

This is a story about how an economist and his buddies tricked the people of Brazil into saving the country from rampant inflation. They had a crazy, unlikely plan, and it worked.