Wherever we’re going, are we there yet? Nope! But we’re getting there. That is, America is sleepwalking its way into poverty. China is performing a kind of financial alchemy. And Australia finds itself subject to American-style problems, but benefitting from China’s Grand Economic Strategy.
China has overtaken the U.S. in yet another category of global influence this morning. This time it’s Brazil. China is now Brazil’s No. 1 trading partner, snapping a nearly 80-year tradition of Brazil depending primarily on exports to America.
Paola Pecora asks: “The inevitable moment arrived: higher inflation in Brazil continues rising dangerously, although it remains within the inflationary goals for the year… what can Brazil do regarding this matter?”
Petroleo Brasileiro SA and the UK’s BG Group have made a second major oil find in Brazil’s Santos Basin.
The Guara exploration well struck oil in the BM-S-9 concession area – the same block as September’s Carioca discovery, which could contain as many as 33 billion barrels of oil.
“There are those who will tell you that oil is a cyclical business and a global fungible commodity,” says Christian DeHaemer in Taipan Daily.
The Brazilian currency, the real, got another boost from the 50 basis point (0.5%) hike in the central bank’s target interest rate on June 4, making Brazil treasury bonds an attractive component of a multi-currency investment portfolio.
Chuck Butler anticipated the rate move in The Daily Reckoning earlier this week…
Oil exploration experts have predicted that Brazilian oil find – the Tupi deposit and possible offshore fields nearby – may cost up to $240 billion to exploit.
But if the prospects turn out to hold $6 trillion of petroleum, they’ll kick the emerging market into the premier league, making it one of the world’s ten largest oil producers.
“There are those who will tell you that oil is a cyclical business and a global fungible commodity,” says Christian DeHaemer in Taipan Daily.
There are those who will tell you that oil is a cyclical business and a global fungible commodity. It rises and falls with the business phase. If you look at a hundred-year chart, it is as obvious as a sidewinder on a sand dune. A sine wave through time — up and down in seven-year cycles.
The US dollar looks set to make a second straight monthly advance against the yen and euro as gains in stocks showed traders are cautiously optimistic the economy may not slide into recession after all.
“The idea that the Fed will continue to cut rates has been completely put to bed and the market is now flirting with the idea of a rate hike. That has given the dollar a boost,” said Alan Ruskin, head of international currency strategy at RBS Greenwich Capital Markets in Connecticut, in Bloomberg. More from that story:
Brazil is an amazing place. For a long time, this country of 186 million was seen as a world power in soccer and that’s about it. Though Brazil is the fifth-largest country in the world and the fifth-most populous, few paid attention to it.
As a result of soaring fuel costs, aircraft demand forecasts are being revised… upwards. Yes, that’s the latest news. What has happened to all the green intentions that columnists are trying to inspire?
