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Brazilian Real Crashes Most In 4 Years As Hope Fades

December 30, 2015

Brazilian Real Crashes Most In 4 Years As Hope Fades

Following recent strength on the heels of hope for a new finance minister, news that Ruosseff has sent the minimum-wage-hike Bill to Congress appears to have crushed the hype of any fiscal rectitude and sent Real tumbling. Down over 4% – the most since September 2011 – BRL is back above 4.00 per USD, giving up all the recent gains.

Broad weakness in EMFX…

Seems to have been exacerbated by:

  • *BRAZIL ROUSSEFF SENDS BILLS ON CIVIL SERVANT WAGES TO CONGRESS

A Bill that could cost BRL 4.77 billion, wrecking hopes of any improvment in the fiscal situation. As Bloomberg reports,

Brazil’s bigger-than-estimated minimum wage increase and potential credit expansion make it harder for govt to control around 11% on year inflation and cut budget gap, Marcelo Schmitt, portfolio manager at investment firm Sul America, says in a phone interview.

These initial policy steps after Barbosa replacing Levy as finance minister are concerning, says Schmitt.

And so…

This is the biggest drop in BRL since September 2011.

Charts: Bloomberg

Confirmation: China As Brazil

October 25, 2015

Confirmation: China As Brazil

There is always some chicken and egg to any financial irregularity; as in does a crisis cause a panic or is it the panic that causes the crisis? Though the evidence of the past eight years is decidedly on the side of the irregularity, central banks continue to press as if that were not so. In no uncertain terms, central bankers persist in expressing their own confidence and, if you read or listen closely enough, great disdain for free markets they deem unworthy as if nothing more than unchained emotion. In the context of 2008, as the current FOMC tells it, the markets got all worked up over nothing much and should have instead simply enjoyed the blind faith in the Fed to have fixed it all without the fuss and bother.

As offensive as that sounds, that is exactly what is being preached. Janet Yellen in April 2014:

Fundamental to modern thinking on central banking is the idea that monetary policy is more effective when the public better understands and anticipates how the central bank will respond to evolving economic conditions. Specifically, it is important for the central bank to make clear how it will adjust its policy stance in response to unforeseen economic developments in a manner that reduces or blunts potentially harmful consequences. If the public understands and expects policymakers to behave in this systematically stabilizing manner, it will tend to respond less to such developments.

There is a fatal fallacy at the heart of this philosophy, one in which has blinded these economists as they marvel at their own assumed powers. Yellen suggests that markets should stop worrying so much about liquidity and other perhaps tangential, but no less meaningful, factors and instead only ignore them in the comfort that Yellen has those all under control. It is no less destructive conceit, one which was revealed to all amply this past decade – starting with the housing bubble itself.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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