A little dose of reality on the "Yay, Brazil, Boo USA" rantings of the OP: RIO DE JANEIRO - Homicides claimed more than 6,000 victims in Rio de Janeiro last year, many of them in gang violence fought by organized crime gangs seeking to control the sale of marijuana and cocaine in the city's favelas, or shantytowns. As if inter-gang violence were not enough, there is now a new element in the mix. Militias formed by off-duty and former cops, prison guards, and firefighters are moving in to oust the drug gangs and install their own brand of extortion. "The militias are unquestionably criminal groups," says Marcelo Freixo, a former human rights activist who studied the phenomenon before being elected to Congress in October. "They push out the traffickers and they charge residents a security tax they are obliged to pay. They control through force but it is not to provide security, it is to make money. One group makes money by selling drugs, the other through terror." Militias now control more than 90 of Brazil's 600-odd favelas. Their violent tactics and growing power caught the attention of new Rio Governor Sergio Cabral. Mr. Cabral's appointees last week removed a top police officer suspected of running one of the militias. Since taking office on Jan. 1, Cabral has made tackling Rio's myriad problems a priority, and the removal of Inspector Félix dos Santos Tostes is seen as a further indication of his commitment. But while the controversial decision focused attention on the power struggles taking place in Rio's poor communities, it also poses a more significant question for the 9 million residents of a city long plagued by crime: Does it mark a new dawn in Rio's struggle against violence, or is it merely a temporary show of strength by a newly elected official seeking to impress? "We often see new leaders taking such moves when they come to power," says Renato Devito, a security expert at the Brazilian Institute of Criminal Sciences. "This is a good sign and shows that authorities can react. But often these actions lead to nothing. We need to wait and see what happens next before declaring Rio is heading in a new direction." Government officials say Mr. Tostes, an adviser to the former police chief, helped lead a band of paramilitaries against one of the drug gangs that control most of Rio's favelas. In recent months, the militias have stepped up their activities and now dominate 92 favelas, according to Mr. Freixo. Currently, about 1 in 5 Rio residents lives in a favela, a frequently lawless community that often lacks basic sanitation, potable water, lighting, and policing. But while most citizens want to see drug traffickers ousted, few are enthusiastic about the paramilitary alternative. Firstly, the militias are not true law enforcement bodies. And secondly, the militias bring their own set of problems. Not only do the power struggles inevitably cause bloodshed, but when militias do prove victorious they often use their status to charge protection money from residents, exercise control over pirated cable television feeds, and the distribution of cooking gas, and even dictate who runs the small minibuses that shuttle to and from the communities. "Militias charge a 'security tax' just as in the Chicago of Al Capone in the 1930s," Rio newspaper O Globo wrote in a recent editorial warning of the dangers they pose. "The next step, as with the mafias, will be to profit from drug trafficking." The issue of who controls security is of fundamental importance to Rio's well-being, with the city's world-famous carnival less than two weeks away and the Pan American Games taking place here in July. A day of violence caused by drug gangs in December left 19 people dead and prompted fears of further bloodshed similar to what happened in São Paulo in May when organized crime brought the city to a standstill with attacks on police stations, buses, supermarkets, and banks. The December attacks prompted Cabral to ask for federal reinforcements but the arrival of troops has done little to halt the killing. Some people, including former security officials, even equate Rio's situation to a low-level war, with the UN reporting that the number of people shot dead in Brazil each year surpasses the annual death toll in the Central American civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s, the first Gulf war, and the conflicts in the Soviet Caucuses in the 1990s. As if to confirm the war parallel, angry residents last week launched a web site modeled on the popular US site iraqbodycount.com. With murders in Rio so common they no longer make headlines, the sites creators set up a local version called riobodycount.com. So far, the web site death toll averages around 10 a day, a conservative estimate given that 17 people died each day from homicides last year, according to government figures. Whatever the exact number, the total is high and underlines the enormity of the task facing Cabral. "People are killing each other but no one realizes how high the numbers are because it's a few dead here and a few dead there," says Vinicius Costa, one of the riobodycount's creators. "The war is here and we can't let these deaths become just forgotten numbers. We wanted to wake people up," he says.
SA, most of us independent traders that care to participate on these threads are independent thinkers and out of the box thinkers, else we would for the most part still be within the corporate walls of silence.... you are raising some interesting points here, and guess what? Paul Volker is doing even more than Greenspan in questioning publically the credentials, competency and results of Bernanke.... so a lot of these issues are not being ignored, however, things do have to work their way through the processes that are already in place.. oh, never forget that when the leaders that actually take the lead, catch cold, all those who follow (or in other words, not as far in front or taking a similar lead) usually catch the flu. that expression (in order to translate into another language and preserve the intent of the expression) means simply using the example of the recession in the US that continues to be denied, is having its negative effects or being shadowed by similar negative recessionary effects in other countries.... oh, and another thing... you asked: "why save ....?" because its the only system we've got, here in the US!
Interesting talking point. Maybe we don't need a fence or immigration enforcement, just a darn good recession.
<font size="5"> Importance of US economy to the World Importance of Brazil economy to the World After 7 more years of growth, the Brazil economy
. April 12, 2008 SouthAmerica: Reply to Limitdown I said: âWhy the US government wants to save a system that it is completely broke? Why stop the collapse by artificial means (by just placing a band aid on the system) instead of watching the system find its own support and new foundation?â This is the way that a free market system operates, by weeding out the bad stuff and surviving in a new form â a form that has a chance of future survival and can move forward into the future without US government intervention. ***** offbyone: Interesting talking point. Maybe we don't need a fence or immigration enforcement, just a darn good recession. ***** SouthAmerica: That fence that they are building in the border with Mexico is the dumbest investment that I ever head. What a waste of money â billions of US dollars that could be used for better purposes such as bridges, tunnels, water systems, and other forms of useful infrastructure. Every time I see Lou Dobbs going crazy on television because of that fence I just shake my read. Most Americans donât even ask some basic questions regarding this issue. Maybe that is asking too much from the average American population anyway. Over the years when I was working on a business plan I had to expend a lot time doing research about the Brazilian population living in the United States about the legal and illegal immigrants and where they were located. For all practical purposes there were 1.3 million Brazilians living in the United States out of 2 million Brazilians living outside of Brazil. The 1.3 million Brazilians living in the United States was split right in the middle â half were legal immigrants and the other half were illegal immigrants. Today according to Lou Dobbs program I heard all kinds of estimates regarding the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States â the US government does not have a clue if there are 12 million or twenty million of illegal immigrants scattered around the United States. Out of the 750,000 Brazilian immigrants living on the United States only a few thousand came across the Mexican border with the US, and there was a reason why these few thousand people came that way â Globo Television Network had a very popular program in Brazil called âAmericaâ â that soap opera did show how a group of Brazilians crossed the border from Mexico to the US and the soap opera did show how these people were able to find jobs and prosper in the United States and some of the characters even were able to become very rich. That soap opera became a marketing tool for people to follow on the footsteps of the soap opera story line and that was when a few thousand Brazilians came to the US via Mexico going thru the desert and so onâ¦. But most Brazilians are smarter than that and they have been going to the United States by the thousands by the usual way â which is a little more comfortable than trying to go across a desert and so on â they just board a 747 in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, or other major Brazilian cities and after a few hours of flight they land in New York City, Newark, NJ, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles and so on. â and then they overstay their tourist visas. I know that coming to the United States by 747 and landing in one of the major cities is not as exciting for a program like Lou Dobbs since there are very few people who actually die during these flights (maybe sometimes someone has a heart attack) and they usually have water and other beverages to drink during the flight, and they even serve food for the passengers. Probably 95 percent of the illegal immigrants got here in the United States by airplane, by bus, by train, by ship, by truck, by car and just a small minority crossed the desert, under the most hostile conditions. In a nutshell: another intelligent investment made by the US government just like the money invested on the US prison system â they are investing billions and billions of US dollars to keep maybe 5 percent of the illegal immigration out of the US. If you think the illegal immigration is bad right now, then just wait when Boeing puts in production the new planes that people can travel almost on the standing position and then the US will be able to import millions and millions of new illegal immigrants from Africa, and Asia. For now anyway, there is an exodus of legal and illegal immigrants who are leaving the United States and returning home to places such as Brazil. Some of these people are going to stay in Brazil but about half of these people who are returning it was because they can do better in Brazil or in Europe. They are moving out of the United States for economic reasons and the US dollar is losing too much value against the Brazilian currency. .
. SouthAmerica: Reply to TraderZones I guess you are down to the point of using pictures to try to communicate your point of view. I can see that you could not find on the web a picture of a "Panda" to illustrate the Importance of US economy to the World - and the country that is keeping the US economy afloat. .
actually what you have seen is "they" are letting "them" fail! ... ever been associated with a failed event? ... ever been fired and want to cover it up on your resume or interviews? ... ever have your hard work or good grades downgraded because your fellow students were essentially brain dead, and being the only smart person in the class of clowns did nothing for your learning experience? simply put, what normally happens are the employees jump ship and the firm collapses from within because of "self interest". Talented people jump ship when their career, family stability and or financial objectives are not being met and addressed. When that happens, no amount of bailouts, prop ups or otherwise solves those problems, especially when there really are no substantive products being made by the company. Financial companies move paper around, manufacturing companies build products, the assests of financial companies are their brilliant employees and creative products developed and marketed. When those people leave, the company looses its core assets and as such, its viability to remain as a going concern. ------- What the Federal Reserve and US Treasury did was save the children and let the parents perish, or more simply, saved the financial system and its close interrelationships and let the errant brokerages fail. certainly with all the political pressure put upon by Congressional hearings (mind you these testimonies are usually taken under oath and if proven to be false, those persons aren't leaving the building), you can just about be certain that those bailouts will not be extended to hedge fund blowups or other non-public major financial institutions... so, how does letting BSC (Bear Sterns) failure occur help the system, I don't even care to attempt to cover that huge topic, there will be sufficient B School papers and research done on all the lies told and failures that occurred, as well as law suits upon law suits by shareholders, pension funds, employees and such against the management team.... what was done kept the financial system and monetary credibility of the US Government afloat, not them. SA (south america), let's focus upon trading, not these global issues, this is NOT the forum for such. so, tell us about the Brazilian trading environment, and how we in the US can establish foreign trading accounts there and benefit from their success... OK? ok!
The problem with America, if you want to call it a problem, is that since it has been so great, for so long, it has that much further to fall. Its like any boom bust, markets rise and fall way beyond comprehension. Its all about relative collapse.
. Limitdown: SA (south america), let's focus upon trading, not these global issues, this is NOT the forum for such. so, tell us about the Brazilian trading environment, and how we in the US can establish foreign trading accounts there and benefit from their success... ***** April 14, 2008 SouthAmerica: Why you guys seem desperate and you want to change the subject of my postings since you donât want someone writing about all the cracks on the US economic dam Why should I focus on trading? This is the economics forum, and on this site there are all the other forums about specific areas of trading. You guys donât need to read the information on the economics forum, just keep reading the postings on the other trading forums and you will be happy. I guess you think that global issues donât affect the markets on the United State. I am not going to teach anybody to trade in Brazil, since you are the last group of people that I want investing in Brazil. You are just a herd and as soon one of you guys gets spooked the entire herd start a stamped causing major trouble to the financial market of that country and also to the value of the currency. Besides the Brazilian market speaks for itself â the Brazilian stock market had a great performance in the last few years, and they had an even more spectacular performance in US dollar terms. ***** Optional: The problem with America, if you want to call it a problem, is that since it has been so great, for so long, it has that much further to fall. Its like any boom bust, markets rise and fall way beyond comprehension. Its all about relative collapse. ***** SouthAmerica: Thank you for your comment. For some reason most Americans think that there is only one way for the price of everything which is up â for stocks, houses, and so forth. They think that we live on a linear world, and when this linear mentality reach the point where the real dynamic world catches up with La La Land and want to adjust to reality, then the pundits on CNBC and in other mainstream media start panicking and they donât give a chance to let things find a more realist level and make the proper corrections. They almost force the Fed to cut the fed funds rate, and even scare the Fed into a massive bailout of a failed institution. And in a way they just compound the problems even further. I am not afraid of a Great Depression, because I understand why they happen about every 70 to 80 years â they are just part of the long term business cycles, and their purpose is to adjust all the pieces of the global economy that are completely out of sink with reality. People can place its problems under the carpet and think that the house it is clean, but that works only so far, after a certain point you have a big mess â thatâs when the entire house of cards comes down and you end up with a Great Depression; and the linear thinking crashes against reality. The Great Depression develops and try to adjust all the cumulative excesses built over a long period of time and things that are completely out of balance â it is a period of major economic and financial adjustments. I donât know why most people are so afraid of the inevitable: a New Great Depression. .