Jonathan Wheatley – Financial Times, 9/4/2014

Brazil’s presidential election on October 5, previously seen as a shoo-in for the incumbent Dilma Rousseff of the leftwing PT, was thrown wide open last month by the death in an air crash of Eduardo Campos of the centre-left PSB, lying third in opinion polls. His running-mate, the much better known Marina Silva, a former environment minister with a compelling story of personal struggle from jungle poverty to national prominence, has surged ahead to take the lead in the polls.

Investors have gone almost dizzy with excitement. Their thinking is that an opposition victory would mean less of the statist, interventionist, ad hoc policy-making seen under Rousseff and more of the market-friendly, across the board, pro-growth reform so many economists and investors in Brazil have been crying out for for years.

But how much should they realistically expect of a Marina government?

Read more…

Ruth Costas – BBC News, 9/7/2014

It is not the kind of economic background Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff must have hoped for in her run for re-election.

Just five weeks before the voting that will take place on 5 October, it was announced that Brazil had fallen into a recession earlier this year. The economy of South America’s largest country shrank by 0.6% in the second quarter of this year and by 0.2% in the first.

Analysts are projecting Brazil’s growth to be less than 1% in 2014 while inflation is at the higher end of the central bank’s target.

Read more…

“I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I casually inspect the universe.”
– Irwin Shaw