The Brazilian financial market shows how much it is a segment that is completely detached from the reality of the country by simply disregarding the disastrous conduct of Bolsonaro's government in the fight against COVID-19 and the country's unprecedented political crisis

The disclosure of the video of the ministerial meeting in which President Jair Bolsonaro and several of his ministers committed, according to several jurists, crimes, including defending the arrest of ministers of the Supreme Court, was positively received by the Brazilian financial market.

As I had already written here, on August 27, 2019, by "betting on a possible liberal agenda of the then-the financial market was one of the biggest supporters of Jair Bolsonaro's candidacy".  

After the election, the Brazilian financial market has completely disregarded the fact that Bolsonaro's "government was largely unable to organize and lead the political debate around a reformist agenda. In fact, the statements of Bolsonaro and Guedes did more harm than good in assisting the approval work of the Social Security Reform. The main architect of this reform was the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, who at various times collided with Bolsonaro and even Paulo Guedes".

This assessment, completely mistaken in my view, continues today amid the chaos caused by COVID-19 and the political catastrophe of the crises that surround the current government, which no longer hides its anti-democratic intentions. The market continues to understand that the fact that Economy Minister Paulo Guedes is considered a strong name in the government is a positive thing. The problem is that Guedes, who is a liberal with an agenda considered outdated even by liberal economists like Monica de Bolle, will be forced now to adopt policies that he has been opposed to for a lifetime.

Several financial market analysts believe the Environment Minister's calling for environmental deregulation while public distracted by COVID and Guedes saying that the suspension of server readjustments is "grenade in the enemy's pocket", during this meeting, are the representation of liberal values!

This represents how ideological the assessment that a large part of the Brazilian financial market makes of the current government, which obviously undermines immensely a pragmatic analysis of what is really happening to the Brazilian economy.

Of the meeting that was released by the courts, only the attacks on China by members of the government, including the president himself, concern part of the Brazilian financial market.

2019 was a year of environmental tragedies in Brazil

The rupture of a Vale dam in Brumadinho (MG), deforestation and burning in the Amazon, and the dumping of oil on Brazilian beaches summed to the unfortunate and terrible statements of the president, Jair Bolsonaro, and the environment minister, Ricardo Salles, contributed to the aggravation of the crises.

In January, the rupture of the Vale dam at the Corrégo do Feijão in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, shocked Brazil and the world. To date, more than 260 deaths of employees of Samarco (a joint-venture between the Brazilian Vale and the English-Australian BHP, each one holding 50% of the company's stocks) and residents of the region have been confirmed. There are people that are still missing. For Greenpeace, what happened in Brumadinho was a "crime".

According to Greenpeace, "cases such as this, which may become more frequent with the easing of environmental licensing, cannot be considered accidents, but social and environmental crimes arising from greed and neglect."

Samarco itself is linked to the largest environmental disaster ever recorded in Brazil. The Mariana dam rupture in Minas Gerais killed 19 people and dumped tons of tailings polluting and destroying the Rio Doce basin and devastating the fauna and flora of the region. In the affected Rio Doce region, approximately 3.2 million people live.

According to the Repérter Brasil website, the Amazon burnings in 2019 were more frequently detected in cattle-producing regions near refrigerators than in the rest of the forest.

In 2019, the burning in the Amazon almost tripled and surpassed the historical average. Within 12 months from August 31, 2018, until August 31, 2019, 30,901 fire outbreaks were recorded compared to 10,421 fire outbreaks for the same period between 2017 and 2018, which corresponds to a 196% increase.

The disaster caused by the oil spill that hit the beaches of the Northeast and part of Southeast Brazil is still unsolved. More than 800 sites have already been hit by oil slicks on the coast. Three months after the appearance of the first spots, the origin of the oil is unknown, and no one has been indicted.

According to ISA, president Jair Bolsonaro's speeches against Indigenous Peoples coupled with weak oversight by Ibama and the Federal Police due to the weakening of these federal agencies by the current government helped to increase deforestation on indigenous lands by 80% in 2019

A study by the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) showed that deforestation in the Amazon between August 2018 and July 2019 was higher in Indigenous lands. The Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) linked Inpe's data to Indigenous territories and found that the increase in the deforested area rises from 30% to 80% in these regions, reaching the haunting number of 42.6 thousand hectares of destroyed forest.

The ISA research shows that 51 million trees have been felled on the Amazon rainforest at Indigenous lands in these twelve months. According to the survey by ISA, the government speech by Jair Bolsonaro boosted burning and deforestation in the Amazon. The study crossed information on deforestation with statements by President Bolsonaro, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, and some governors in the region such as Gladson Cameli, governor of Acre.

Bolsonaro, who had said I will no longer demarcate even an "extra square inch of indigenous land," harshly criticized the destruction of vehicles used by illegal loggers by Ibama agents. He also dismissed the president of Inpe when the institute published figures on the increase in deforestation.

Acre Governor Gladson Cameli was recorded telling illegal loggers to "not pay" the fines imposed by the government.

Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, in turn, met with timber producers in Espigão d'Oeste, Rondônia, and highlighted the role of the timber industry in that state. Interestingly, illegal logging in the municipality of Espigão d'Oeste rose 332% in 2019.

All this happens in a year also terrible for the Indigenous peoples. According to Pastoral da Terra, in 2019, the death toll of indigenous leaders killed was the highest in the last 11 years. Of the 27 people who died in rural conflicts in Brazil this year, 7 were indigenous leaders, compared to 2 in 2018, according to the organization.

Amazon deforestation reaches frightening levels and rises 29.5% in 2019; almost 10.000 square kilometers were cut down

According to experts, Jair Bolsonaro's anti-environmental speech, coupled with the dismantling of oversight bodies, prompted a clearing of the forest in 2019.

As published by the Climate Observatory, a coalition of dozens of environmental conservation organizations in Brazil, "this is a direct result of Bolsonaro's strategy of dismantling the Ministry of Environment, demobilizing enforcement, shelving plans. to combat deforestation of previous governments and to empower environmental criminals in his speech, and the president himself has proudly stated that he had sent his anti-environment minister, Ricardo Salles, 'to put the scythe into the IBAMA Renewable Natural Resources] '.Salles obeyed."

According to data from Prodes 2019 (Satellite Legal Amazon Deforestation Monitoring Project), released by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), the deforested area in the Amazon was 9,762 km² between August 2018 and July 2019, the highest since 2008. This figure represents a 29.5% increase over the same period last year (August 2017 to July 2018), when deforestation was 7,536 km².

This increase represents the highest rate since 2008 and also the biggest jump from year to year in the last 22 years. For scientists like Carlos Nobre, this deforestation should transform part of the Amazon territory into an impoverished savanna. Obviously, this is very serious, which should affect the climate in the region and reduce, due to the change in the country's rainfall cycle, the capacity of Brazilian agricultural production. Deforestation is horrible for the environment and also bad for business.

This week, during a talk at the Wilson Center Brazil Institute in Washington, Brazil's agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina, heard several questions about problems in the Amazon at meetings with officials and investors. Therefore, the risk of an increase in the boycott of Brazilian products is getting bigger.

On Twitter, Brazil's Environment Minister Ricardo Salles insinuates that Greenpeace is linked to oil on beaches in the northeast of the country; Greenpeace goes to court against Salles for hinting NGO link to environmental disaster

In his Twitter account, Brazil's Environment Minister Ricardo Salles has again attacked the environmental organization Greenpeace. This time, Salles hinted that the organization could be behind the oil spill that affects the country's coast.

Greenpeace public policy coordinator Marcio Astrini responded to the accusations by saying that the NGO is "going to court against false statements made by the minister."

In an official statement, Greenpeace stated that it will take “all reasonable legal measures against all statements made by Minister Ricardo Salles. The authorities have to take responsibility and account for the rule of law for their actions.”

This unacceptable behavior is present throughout Jair Bolsonaro's government. The environment minister just replicates the same practice of making irresponsible and unrealistic accusations on social networks. Brazil's own president did this when the Amazon fires gained worldwide attention. At that time, Bolsonaro said, with no proof of his claim, that NGOs could be behind the fires. 

However, investigations by the Brazilian Civil Police and Federal Police indicate, for example, that farmers and businessmen from Novo Progresso were organizers of the 'Fire Day' that burned thousands of hectares in the Amazon region.

Members of the Federal Prosecution Service of Brazil (MPF) file a civil action against President Jair Bolsonaro's government to force him to act to combat the oil spill that is already the biggest environmental disaster in the country's coastal history

Prosecutors in nine northeastern states accuse the Brazilian federal government of omission. They decided to go to court to demand that the federal government trigger a 24-hour contingency plan, which was created in 2013 and was terminated on April 2014 by the Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) government. Following the adoption of the measure imposed by the government of Jair Bolsonaro, dozens of boards of the federal administration and two committees that were part of the National Contingency Plan for Oil Pollution Incidents (PNC), were extinguished.

So far, oil containment that is polluting several beaches in northeastern Brazil is being done by Petrobras and state governments. The governor of Bahia, Rui Costa, publicly discussed with the Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, through Twitter.

Costa said Salles should "stop doing politics and work" and asked the minister if she already knew who was responsible for the "very serious environmental accident" and what the minister had done about the leak.

The lack of action by the federal government is very serious indeed. The problem of oil slicks on the Brazilian coast began in August, but only in recent days has the federal government started to act a little more intensely. However, Jair Bolsonaro, who has not visited any of the affected areas, will travel to Asia in the midst of the biggest environmental crisis of the history of the Brazilian beaches.

Since August 30, 187 regions of the Brazilian Northeast coast have been reached. 12 conservation units were polluted. Beautiful beaches that attract thousands of tourists every year were hit, as is the case of São José da Coroa Grande (PE) beach.

The images are terrifying. In many beaches, the residents themselves are gathering to try to remove the oil and save the environment, but the lack of a plan of combat and action by the federal government in these regions is evident.

Gold mining dam breaks in Mato Grosso and injures two people; meanwhile, the Brazilian president continues to defend the implementation of large-scale mining in the Amazon

Yesterday, the TB01 dam in the municipality of Nossa Senhora do Livramento, in Mato Grosso, broke up leaving two people injured. The tailings from gold mining flowed through an area of vegetation on the site, knocking down a high voltage pole that serves the region. The Civil Defense rules out the need to vacate the city, which is 30 kilometers away.

Mining in Brazil has already produced numerous environmental disasters. The crimes committed by the mining companies in the cities of Mariana, Bento Rodrigues and Brumadinho, in Minas Gerais, produced huge damage to the affected ecosystems and the region's economy. Such losses are so great that they are incalculable and in some cases irreversible.

As this blog post already pointed out, the landslide that occurred in Brumadinho dam of Vale on January 25 is an example. 250 people died. The tragedy was a direct result of the lack of public oversight and the policy of easing environmental licensing laws, which is widely advocated by the current government of Jair Bolsonaro and his Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, which want to apply this same policy to the Amazon region.

Yesterday, President Jair Bolsonaro, speaking to a group of prospectors, stated that "the interest in the Amazon isn't in the Indian or the fucking tree, it's in the ore." The statement took place in front of Planalto Palace after Bolsonaro received representatives of the group.

Bolsonaro wants to implement large-scale mining in the Amazon.

Jair Bolsonaro's two government ministers, Onyx Lorenzoni (Civil House) and Ricardo Salles (Environment), receive miners who act illegally in protected areas of the Amazon

According to a report in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, men who do gold-digging operating illegally in Pará stated, in audios distributed in application groups, that demanded from ministers Onyx Lorenzoni (Casa Civil) and Ricardo Salles (Environment) the opening of an investigation against servers from Ibama and ICMBio who destroyed equipment caught by environmental crime enforcement in late August and early September 2019.

According to site G1, men linked to illegal mining responded violently to enforcement actions by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) in August 2019.

Several agents of the institute were shot at near an indigenous area in Pará on August 30. According to the Federal Police, criminal action was intended to intimidate actions to combat illegal mining in the region.

Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles gives an interview to a white Canadian supremacist

Canadian YouTuber Stefan Molyneux published on his social networks, on the last day 2.09.2019, an interview with the Brazilian Minister of Environment, Ricardo Salles. The video lasts 24 minutes. In them, both speak of the recent environmental crisis involving the burning of the Amazon rainforest. 

Molyneux, however, is known for being a supporter of white supremacist ideas as well as free liberalism of state regulation. 

The interview is very revealing, as it indicates that Salles, who has decided to tackle countries like Germany and Norway, which were helping to protect the Amazon through the money they sent to the Amazon Fund, is willing to use part of his time to give an interview for an obscure social media figure rather than negotiating with the nations mentioned.

The interview points to the amateurism of the current administration, which, amid an unprecedented environmental crisis, makes accusations against possible international partners and approaches controversial figures, to say the least, and of no political importance like Stefan Molyneux.

Prior to being appointed to the post of the environment minister, Salles, like Molyneux, was a minor and controversial figure in Brazilian politics. Prior to being minister, Ricardo Salles was a federal deputy candidate for the ultra-liberal Partido Novo. During the campaign, Salles used social networks to spread messages that incited violence.

Salles's candidacy number was 30-06 in allusion to a type of ammunition, which he in his messages promised to use to combat the "boar plague" and "against the left and the MST", Landless Workers' Movement.

The Partido Novo itself disapproved of Salles's publications during the campaign. In recent weeks, the Partido Novo has tried to explain that Salles, who remains a member of the Partido Novo, did not represent the party in the federal government. Paradoxically, the Partido Novo supports the government in House votes, has a cabinet minister, but publicly says it has no connection with Jair Bolsonaro.

These are not the only problems represented by Salles, in December 2018, he was convicted of administrative misconduct and had his political rights suspended for three years. The sentence, handed down by Judge Fausto José Martins Seabra, Salles allegedly committed, when he was secretary of the environment of the government of São Paulo, various irregularities and disarray that could harm the environment.

Companies (Timberland, Vans, Kipling) and some European Governments Decide to Take Action Against Brazil Due to Jair Bolsonaro's Environmental Policy and Amazon rainforest Burning

According to information from the Brazilian Tannery Industries Center (CICB), more than 18 international brands, including Timberland, Vans, and Kipling, announced that they will suspend the purchase of Brazilian leather due to news related to burning in the Amazon region. 

The decision undermines Brazilian agribusiness. Yesterday, the CICB sent all this information to the Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, with the intention of making the current government reviewing its environmental policy and the intention to make the inspection more flexible in the region, as the minister himself and the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro have promised.

The Swedish government has also announced that it will review investments of its pension funds in Brazil in light of the Amazon. In total, Swedish pension applications total R$ 650 billion worldwide. To make matters worse, Swedish Finance Minister Per Bolund made public criticism of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and the current Brazilian environmental policy.

The Norwegian government, for its part, has decided to call up Norwegian companies operating in Brazil and ask them to check whether they cause damage to the Amazon. The Norwegian government wants assurances that companies will not do business with companies that are harmful to the biome.

Today, after a tough meeting with governors of the region occurred yesterday in Brasília, where the president heard criticism from politicians like Flávio Dino, governor of Maranhão and opposition to the current federal government, the president Jair Bolsonaro was found himself almost embarrassed to step back and open the doors for bilateral aid donations to the Amazon.

The denial of the current Jair Bolsonaro government over European Union aid has been sharply criticized by the region's governors. Since Brazil is facing an economic crisis and has little money for many public services, denying receiving the money offered by the governments of Germany, Norway, and France sound almost unbelievable.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accuses the NGOs without proof of being responsible for the Amazon burning; Environment Minister Ricardo Salles booed at event in Bahia; #PrayForAmazonas: Burning becomes the most talked about Twitter topic in the world

Without presenting any evidence, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accused NGOs of being responsible for the Amazon burning.

In his Twitter account, opposition deputy Marcelo Freixo said: "Bolsonaro is a cynic. But you can't just attribute cynicism to the statement that NGOs are burning the Amazon. The president's goal is to disqualify and criminalize organs and movements of environmental preservation. Burning paving the way for barbarism".

The statement was very much criticized. In Salvador to attend Latin American and Caribbean Climate Change Week, Greenpeace senior forest strategist Paulo Addario said that "criminalizing NGOs is criminalizing citizenship". WWF-Brazil Executive Director Mauricio Voivodic said that Bolsonaro's speech "it does not support itself at all."

Paradoxically, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, in a post on his Twitter on the 20th, said that the fires that hit the Amazon are due to drought, wind and a strong heatwave in the region." Salles, by the way, was booed yesterday at the same Latin American and Caribbean Climate Change Week Climate Week in Salvador, Bahia.

In an interview with BBC Brazil, Professor of the Environmental Sciences Department of the Institute of Forests of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), Jerônimo Sansevero, said that Brazil will take at least 20 years to recover the destroyed part. But there are, he said, other "areas that have already lost their [recovery] capacity because they already have large-scale deforestation."

Yesterday, the hashtag #PrayForAmazonas has become one of the most talked-about topics on Twitter worldwide, even topping the list with hundreds of thousands of publications on the topic.

It is undeniable, however, that the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency was accompanied by the also undeniable growth of burning in the Amazon. For many analysts, Bolsonaro's talk about the legalization of mining in the Amazon and indigenous lands, his undeniable proximity to the ruralists, his defense of landowner weaponry increase one right goes all in the region.

Amazonia is burning! Number of fires in the Brazilian region grows scary 70%, in 2019

According to a research by the Programa Queimadas (Burning Program) of Inpe (Brazilian National Institute for Space Research), which measures the number of fire outbreaks in Brazil, the number of fires grew a staggering 70% in 2019 compared to 2018. 

The Amazon is by far the most affected biome as it accounts for over 50% of fires. The Brazilian Cerrado biome, in turn, is the scene of 30% of fire outbreaks. 

Most of the fires are produced by ranchers who want to turn the forest into an area for beef cattle production. The current drought in the region greatly facilitates the spread of fire.

Meanwhile, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, during an event in the interior of São Paulo, said that much of the responsibility of the fires are of the state governments, which do not make the ideal control of fire outbreaks.

However, the Mato Grosso Fire Department, one of the states most affected by the fires, said it needed more support from the federal government. The Fire Department of Mato Grosso also said to see with concern the blockade of the Amazon Fund that, until this year, has invested R$ 12 million in structure to combat fire in the state.

The current government has refused to receive millions of reais sent from Germany and Norway to the Amazon Fund. President Jair Bolsonaro even said that Chancellor Angela Merkel should use the money to reforest Germany.

German media (Der Spiegel and Die Zeit) talk of imposing sanctions against the Brazilian government over Jair Bolsonaro's environmental policies

Der Spiegel magazine and weekly newspaper Die Zeit, two of Germany's leading publications, said it was "time for sanctions against Brazil" over the environmental policy of the current government-run by Jair Bolsonaro.

According to a report published today in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, the largest in Brazil, Der Speigel magazine states in its pages that “Europe should not be idle while a hateful skeptic of science sacrifices vast areas of the forest for ranchers and soybean plantations ”.

At the beginning of August, the British magazine The Economist, in its cover story, drew attention to the fact that the Amazon was in danger of dying. The publication also called for global vigilance and stated that "the world must make clear to Bolsonaro that it will not tolerate its vandalism."

According to the newspaper, Folha do Progresso, in Novo Progresso, Pará, the producers, feeling "supported by the words of President" Jair Bolsonaro, coordinated a collective action to burn pasture and areas in the process of deforestation. The goal, according to one of the leaders heard under anonymity, is to show the president that they want to work.

Meanwhile, the São Paulo Public Prosecutor's Office opened an inquiry to investigate suspicion of illicit enrichment by Environment Minister Ricardo Salles between 2012 and 2017, during which time he alternated his legal activity with the positions of Private Secretary and Secretary of the Environment of the São Paulo Government.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rebuts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and says that Germans 'have much to learn' with Brazil

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is in Osaka, Japan, for the G20 summit, rebuffed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who expressed concern about Brazil's environmental policy and said the country's situation is dramatic. For Bolsonaro, Brazilians "have an example to give to Germany about the environment. Their industry is still fossil. It's part of coal. Not ours. They have to learn a lot from us".

According to the journalist Glenn Greenwald, "German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she views what is taking place in Brazil under Bolsonaro with great concern - as 'dramatic'- due to the threats he poses both to basic human rights and the environment".

The environmental policy of the Bolsonaro government should be the biggest drag on Brazil during the G20 meeting in Japan. It is not only Germany that is pressing Brazil in relation to the environmental policies of the Bolsonaro government. The French government, for example, has been one of the toughest in the talks on the trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union. The main French argument is the fact that Brazil does not seem committed to the Paris Agreement – by which nations have committed themselves to meet pollution reduction targets.

To make matters worse, in an interview with BBC News Brazil, Brazil's Environment Minister Ricardo Salles said that the Brazilian government will insist on the message that it is necessary to explore the economic possibilities of the Amazon, diversifying the activities inside and around the Amazon Rainforest.

For most environmentalists, the minister's speech was received as more deforestation and damage to the Amazon Rainforest.