My first conversation on Kindly – a new, anonymous chatting app where strangers can seek emotional support — didn’t go so well. I volunteered to be a listener and I was matched with a teenager from the United States. He or she (gender wasn’t revealed) told me their aunt — who they live with — was making sexual advances. “If I please her do you think she will let go of me?” The person asked me.

I stared at my phone slack-jawed. How to respond to a question like that? I’m not a therapist and I certainly don’t have professional training. It was possible the stranger I was chatting with was lying, spinning an elaborate ruse for fun, but I had no way of knowing. If their predicament was real, I was in no position to offer advice. It was the most memorable and worrisome experience I’ve had yet with a…

Mario Sergio Lima – Bloomberg, 9/23/2014

Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega defended today the use of the country’s sovereign fund to help meet fiscal targets in a year when Latin America’s biggest economy had its debt rating downgraded.

Brazil announced it will withdraw 3.5 billion reais ($1.45 billion) from the sovereign fund to cover spending. The primary surplus, which excludes interest payments, was 1.22 percent of gross domestic product in the year through July, compared with the 1.9 percent target.

“The sovereign fund is a primary savings account we created in 2008 and is perfectly usable,” Mantega told reporters today in Brasilia. “Nothing is more legitimate than using that fund to cover part of expenses.”

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