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terça-feira, 29 de setembro de 2015

Brazil's economy plunging; no relief in sight - Associated Press


Brazil's economy plunging; no relief in sight


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In this Aug.27, 2015 photo, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff attends a ceremony in Brasilia,... Read more

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A currency hitting historic lows. Unemployment at a five-year peak. Consumer spending in the dumps, and a grinding political crisis that's frozen leaders' ability to push through Congress measures to jumpstart a moribund economy.
The news keeps getting worse for the once-ballyhooed Brazilian economy, compounding the delicate political situation for President Dilma Rousseff, who polls show is the nation's most unpopular president since the 1985 return to democracy.
Rousseff is trying to fight off widespread calls for her impeachment or resignation, which gives her scant political capital to force austerity measures through Congress to halt across-the-board economic hemorrhaging.
Brazil's woes were stoked by the recent years' collapse in commodity prices, due largely to lessening demand from China's slowing economy. Economists also blame failure to reform taxes and labor markets over the past decade of good times, and the collapse of an economic model that relied on domestic consumption.
"It wasn't just that Brazil consumed all its commodity income it took in from 2007 to 2011, it's that it consumed all of it plus more by borrowing overseas," said Neil Shearing, the New York-based chief emerging markets economist for Capital Economics.
Not preparing itself for lean years while its economy expanded created an "ugly toxic mix."
"Add on top of the economic train wreck a political train wreck, and the fact that the government can't push through Congress the fiscal belt-tightening measures it needs to create growth," Shearing said.
That's largely why Brazil lost its investment-grade status when Standard & Poor's downgraded the nation's sovereign debt this month. Stockholders are suffering too: Companies listed on Brazil's main Bovespa stock market have lost $1 trillion in value since early 2011.
Politically, Rousseff is increasingly isolated amid the worst graft case the nation has yet seen. Prosecutors say top construction and engineering firms paid over $2 billion in bribes to some politicians and executives of state-run oil company Petrobras in exchange for inflated contracts during a period when Rousseff herself was the company's chairwoman. While she faces no formal accusations of wrongdoing, the leader of the lower house already faces corruption charges and the head of the Senate is under investigation, adding to legislative gridlock.
The scandal has paralyzed Petrobras, long the pride of Brazilian enterprise and the company counted on to catapult the nation to developed-world status by tapping into vast offshore oil reserves discovered in recent years, undersea riches it's been unable to make good on.
It's also hit the construction sector at the epicenter of the scandal. Construction and industry account for the vast majority of the 986,000 Brazilians who lost their jobs in the last 12 months, according to a Friday report from the Labor Ministry.
The economy's problems are varied and acute, with few short- or midterm remedies.
The Brazilian currency, the real, has plummeted about 35 percent against the dollar this year, hitting an all-time low in recent days of over 4-to-1. A strong dollar hikes inflation in Brazil and cripples many of the nation's top firms that hold dollar-denominated debt — principally Petrobras, the country's biggest company.
The currency plunge has also shocked Brazilian consumers, who for years enjoyed a strong real that made foreign goods seem cheaper.
Now, Brazilians are curtailing trips to the U.S., where legions went on shopping sprees in recent years. They're also confronting rapidly rising prices on everything from cosmetics to medicine to that most basic of products on virtually all Brazilian tables at breakfast — what locals call "French" bread: crusty little loaves that are purchased daily and are now more expensive as Brazil imports more than 60 percent of the wheat it consumes.
"This simple staple of the Brazilian diet, literally 'our daily bread,' is beginning to be too expensive for some of us," said Silvia Vasconcelos, a housewife gesturing toward the bakery section inside a grocery store in Rio's Ipanema neighborhood, where the price of bread has risen by about 30 percent in the last five months to $3.75 per kilogram ($1.70 a pound). "Who knows where the price will go, but for now I have to buy less than I'd like."
With inflation running at 9.5 percent — well above the government's ceiling target of 6.5 percent — the Central Bank has less space to cut benchmark interest rates, said Caio Megale, an economist with Itau Unibanco, Brazil's largest bank.
That means borrowing costs will remain high for businesses and individuals, making it difficult to spark domestic growth.
Exporters in Brazil should be the winners because a weaker local currency makes their products cheaper and thus more competitive abroad.
But Jose Castro, head of Brazil's Association of Foreign Trade, said the strong dollar isn't yet of much help. Things are changing so fast people are afraid to sign contracts because they don't know where the currency is heading.
"Predictability is one of the main problems," he said. "It's too shaky for anyone to do business."
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Associated Press writer Mauricio Savarese contributed to this report.
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segunda-feira, 28 de setembro de 2015

Of all the endangered species, help save the suffering greater danger: human. #UNICEF


Of all the endangered species, help save the suffering greater danger:  human.

We need to save the planet earth, which is sending clear signs of exhaustion, terminally ill.

We must act quickly to save what is still left of our primary forests.

We need urgent measures to save our rivers.

The oceans are dying intoxicated, who can save?

Elephants, lions, dolphins, whales, monkeys, birds, birds, large, small, wild, domestic, on every continent, in every ocean in different ecosystems, fauna, flora, all in need of urgent and effective action to preserve their various known and unknown species.

What are we doing?

We will be able to save other species, if we can not ensure the survival nor our own ?

If we are not able to act with speed and efficiency needed to save our own species, how we can save other species? 

We must save the children of the world.

Tens, hundreds, thousands, millions of children dying of hunger, thirst, abuse, victims of all the most cruel forms of physical, moral, psychological, social, economic, war, finally, the greatest of all disasters already experienced by our species.

It is in the final consummation course the massive extinction of our species, and all the others, that to survive in the future, now depend of our total annihilation, for they, themselves, without our criminal interference, can survive in harmony with Mother Nature. What we were not able to do.

Do you want to help save the Earth, our rivers, forests, different species ?

So let's start this gigantic global rescue operation of our children, and maybe we can save, too, the chicks of other endangered species.

If we fail to save our own children, how can we want to save the other species?

Earth Day fight in defense of the environment, self-sustaining activity - fought in defense of ecosystems, fauna and flora, but for these objectives to be achieved, it is necessary and urgent to fight in defense of our children -

Christmas, the end of 2015 and the beginning of a new year, 2016, approaches.

What do we do to reverse this dramatic picture of self-annihilation of our own species -

We can start this challenging rescue operation, performing a global rescue operation of our children, around the world, through UNICEF.

Knife your donation to UNICEF.

Me and you do not we can not go save children in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe plagued by endless waves of refugee children dying of hunger and thirst, lost in the crowds of bewildered immigrants fleeing hunger, violence and barbarity.

You and I can not go to the Middle East, but UNICEF can go as it is already present in all the plagued regions of the world, fighting bravely to save children, regardless of gender, color, religion, ethnicity, creed, race, or any other form of discrimination.

Let us join forces, we will hold a big, strong and powerful chain of solidarity in favor of all children of the world, of all nations, peoples, cultures.

Let's save the children of the world.

Make your donation to UNICEF.

Our challenge - do not buy fireworks to celebrate the beginning of 2016.

Let's start 2016 with new hopes, new forces united around one goal - to save the children of the planet earth, so they can save all the other species, and depend on our intelligent and rational actions.

Do not buy fireworks, do not burn fireworks to celebrate the beginning of the new year 2016 approaching.

Let's celebrate the New Year 2016, and shout so that all people listen - Happy New Year, children of the world in a revolutionary way, never been done before in the history of mankind.

Donating to the UNIFEC the money we would have spent bought fireworks.

Rather than buy fireworks, to burn at the turn of the new year, we will light and illuminate the first night of 1 January 2016, buying bread, notebooks, pencils, water, books, clothes, clothing, bedding, shoes, medicines by sending doctors, nurses, teachers, building schools, hospitals, saving abandoned children in the world.

Knife your donation on UNICEF's website.

With the money you use to buy fireworks make their donation directly to UNICEF after the reports, the confirm your donation with the UNICEF, and on the night of December 31, we will post a list with the names of all those in all over the world, who have decided to roll up our sleeves, and get this fight to save the world's children.


Let's light up the night of New Years Eve 2016, not burning fireworks, but with the bright smile of our children, and the certainty that we can save the planet earth, and all the other species, if we are able, courageous , innovative, revolutionary and challenges the Pope Francis, and sufficiently aware of the need to first save our future, they are our children.

Light this idea!

People, Countries, Nations, States, Cities, Municipalities, Enterprises, Traders, Industries, all the money, all over the planet earth, all that would be used to buy fireworks, which is intended to UNICEF.

Happy New Year, 2016!

Saving the world's children, who also will save other equally endangered specie

Dia da Terra
Brazil, Curitiba.

quarta-feira, 23 de setembro de 2015

sunset, today Curitiba, Brazil Photos

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