Cuántas cosas buenas habrás hecho, Dilma querida, para que te tiren con esta saña. Astroboy sospecha que se está preparando la privatización de Petrobrás, nada menos. Por lo pronto, los indicadores económicos de nuestro vecino dan pie a noticias tenebrosas de todo calibre. Asustando a la gente, que le dicen. Preparándola para las caritas serias y las boquitas fruncidas de los funcionarios anunciando los ajustes. Cuando la prensa financiera usa la palabra "Argentina", ya sabemos que es para asustar a los gurrumines. Ya arrugó Grecia, así que somos el único cuco que queda en el mundo, chicos. En fin. Leemos hoy en Zero Hedge:
Título: Is This
Country Latin America's Next "Argentina"
Texto: One week
ago we reported on the economic devastation in he one Latin American country
which has yet to be noticed by the broader financial media: Brazil.
This is what we
said:
Back on December
29 of last year, we explained how under the burden of its soaring current
account deficit, and its its first primary fiscal deficit since 1998, not to
mention numerous corruption scandals and a dysfunctional monetary policy, the
Brazilian economy "just imploded." We also noted the main reason for
the Latin American collapse: Brazil had for the past decade become China's
favorite source of commodities, and now that China suddenly no longer needed
commodities, the Brazilian economy went into freefall.
We followed this
up a month later with "Brazil's Economy Is On The Verge Of Total
Collapse" which repeated more of the same, only this time the situation
was even worse.
It took the
rating agencies 7 months to figure out what our readers had known since 2014,
when two days ago S&P downgraded Brazil's credit rating from Stable to
Negative citing, what else, the "sharp deterioration of the growth and
fiscal consolidation outlook and heightened political/institutional
friction" adding that "the negative outlook reflects the agency’s
view of a “greater than one–in–three likelihood that the policy correction will
face further slippage given fluid political dynamics and that the return to a
firmer growth trajectory will take longer than expected."
Following the
S&P announcement others promptly jumped on the bandwagon, most prominently
Goldman Sachs which had some jarring words about what is going on in Brazil's
economy:
Records show that
over the last 11 years we cannot find a period with a strictly-worse
growth-inflation outcome than that of 2Q2015 . That is, since 1Q2004 there has
not been a single quarter in which we had simultaneously higher inflation and
lower growth than during 2Q2015. In fact, in 96% of the 46 quarters between
1Q2004 and 2Q2015 the economy was delivering simultaneously higher growth and
lower inflation than during 2Q2015.
We concluded as
follows: "In short, the Brazilian economy has never been worse and just to
hammer that point home, Goldman added a chart which makes it quite clear that
Brazil is not in a recession: it is almost certainly in a depression at this
moment - note the recession bar on the chart below and where it is now."
Today, following
another spike in negative news, it appears that the credit markets have finally
woken up, and a quick look at Brazil's CDS shows that following today's spike
to 314bps, the country's implied default risk is back to levels last seen in
April of 2009!
And here's why we
expect the blowout in CDS not to stop here.
First, overnight
the WSJ reported that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s approval rating has
slumped into the single digits to a record low, as the country’s economy
struggles and a corruption scandal grows.
Only 8% of
respondents across the country said Ms. Rousseff’s administration was “good or
excellent,” and 71% considered it to be “bad or terrible,” according to a poll
released Thursday by the Datafolha polling institute. That compared with
approval of 10% and disapproval of 65% in a June poll, also by Datafolha. The
survey result is the lowest for any president since 1990, when the polling
series began.
Ms. Rousseff’s
approval rating in the latest poll was lower even than former President
Fernando Collor de Mello, who slipped to 9% in September 1992, shortly before
he was impeached.
As the WSJ adds,
Rousseff is facing a combination of negative factors, of which the
depressionary economy is just one: "The county’s economy is expected to
contract by around 1.8% this year, according to a central bank survey of
private sector bank economists. Annual inflation stands at 9.25%, well above
the central bank’s tolerance band of 2.5% to 6.5%. And the poor economic
conditions are raising fears among Brazilians that they could lose their
jobs."
Then there is
corruption:
Meanwhile, a
continuing investigation surrounding state-run oil company Petróleo Brasileiro
SA, or Petrobras, is also weighing on Ms. Rousseff’s approval rating, though
she hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing and has denied involvement in the
scandal. Petrobras has said it is cooperating with the investigation.
Earlier this
week, federal police arrested José Dirceu, a former minister of ex-President
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on allegations that he received bribes from former
Petrobras executives. A lawyer representing Mr. Dirceu said he denies any
wrongdoing.
Mr. da Silva, who
handpicked Ms. Rousseff as his party’s candidate to succeed him, hasn’t been
implicated in the Petrobras scandal.
Worse, like in
Greece, Brazil's ruling coalition is now fracturing, when yesterday two parties
broke from President Dilma Rousseff’s ruling coalition, further eroding support
for her measures to shore up the country’s fiscal accounts.
This happened
after the lower house approved in a first round vote a constitutional amendment
by 445 against 16 votes granting salary increases to police chiefs, prosecutors
and government attorneys. The bill still needs to pass a second round vote
before going to the Senate.
Earlier, leaders
of the Brazilian Labor Party and the Democratic Labor Party, or PTB and PDT,
said they would act independently and no longer participate in meetings of the
ruling coalition. The parties together have 44 out of 513 seats in the Chamber.
But Brazil's
biggest concern, the one from which all of its other problems stem, is China.
Unless the country that was the driver of Brazil's commodity export golden age
returns to its place as Brazil's most important trading partner, no matter what
fiscal or monetary policies Brazil implements, the domestic politics, already
ugly, are set to get worse.
And as everyone
knows by now, China has its own spate of problems to deal with, with Brazil's
commodity export troubles far on the back burner.
Which is why
expect more credit market participants to notice the depressionary developments
in Brazil, and as the country's CDS continue to blow out, many will start
asking themselves: is Brazil the next Argentina?
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario