In one year, the Selic interest rate goes from 2% to 9.25%

The Selic interest rate is the monetary policy interest rate used by the Brazil Central Bank (BCB). In 2021, that tool went from 2% in february to 9.25% in november after the last reunion of Copom, the BCB's Monetary Policy Committee. 

At the last Copom meeting, held yesterday, the Selic rate rose from 7.75% to 9.25%, up 1.5 percentage points. According to analysts, this more hawkish tone by the Copom is an attempt to prevent runaway inflation. 

Which indicates that interest rates in Brazil will stay high for longer. The expectation is that inflation will only start to decelerate around the second quarter of 2022, but not even this is guaranteed given the numerous crises that President Bolsonaro and his government produce weekly.

The feeling of insecurity generated by the government greatly affects the forecasts of investors and the market in general.

With that, the next government should receive a country pressured by the basic interest rates of the economy and with the risk of greater lack of control in the public debt, which is already high.

  

Investment by global funds in Brazil drops from 1.94% in 2009 to 0.23% in 2020

Foreign investors are fleeing Brazil. The expectation of an increase in the US interest rate, added to the aversion to the risks of investing in a country where the government is taking great steps towards a fiscal crisis, produced a flight of funds dedicated to Brazil.

According to the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo, Brazil's participation in funds dedicated to emerging markets dropped from 16.4% in 2011 to the current 5.1%.

For the poorest Brazilians, the scenario is terrible. Inflation reaches 40% for this portion of the population and the level of unemployment has practically doubled. According to DIAP, Brazil is on the way to stagflation. 

Cost of living in Brazil: September inflation of 1.16% is the highest for the month since 1994, the beginning of the Real Plan; in 12 months, IPCA accumulates high of 10.25%

Although the brazilian index IPCA (Broad National Consumer Price Index), that shows the inflation rate was 1.16%, the highest for the month since 1994. It was below the expectation of 1.25% of the financial market. In the real live, the cost of living in Brazil continues to grow alarmingly.

Much of the IPCA in September was driven by energy and fuel prices.

As the increase in the electricity tariff was what most influenced the index. It is possible to say that inflation was less spread to food products. However, in 2021, Brazil reached the terrible mark of 7.5 million Brazilians living under severe food insecurity, and more than 19 million people living in extreme poverty

Bolsonaro's disapproval reaches 68%; 7 out of 10 Brazilians don't trust the president or the government

A new poll by Ipec shows that 69% of Brazilians do not trust President Bolsonaro.

Ipec, the research institute headed by Márcia Cavallari, researched two scenarios for the 2022 elections. In both, Lula can win the 2022 presidential elections in the 1st round.

According to the survey, Lula leads the 1st round in 2022 with more than 20 points ahead of Bolsonaro.

Also according to Ipec, Lula would have more votes than the total of all other candidates combined.

President Lula's speech at CUT forced Bolsonaro to adopt a more civilized stance in the face of the covid-19 pandemic

After a speech made by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, today, at the Workers' Union Central (CUT), the political chessboard in Brazil completely changed. The Workers Party lider defended vaccines, social isolation, sympathized with the families of the more than 260 thousand victims. On the same day, goverment members — including the president Jair Bolsonaro, a world-renowned denialist —, appeared all masked, defending vaccines, and promising to tackle the pandemic.

Now, the strategy of denialism as a policy adopted by Bolsonaro during the pandemic, with the trivialization of deaths and the naturalization of the cleavage between the economy and combating the pandemic —  as if they were opposite things — changed drastically.

The former Brazilian President, Lula da Silva, criticized the government of President Bolsonaro for not wearing the mask, drinking and going to celebrations, fighting with scientists. For Lula,  Bolsonaro committed a number of impeachable acts.

Lula da Silva practically forced Bolsonaro to adopt a more civilized stance in the face of the covid-19 pandemic.

General Joaquim Silva and Luna should take over Petrobras (PETR4) under heavy depreciation in the stock price of the Brazilian state oil company

The investor that was still betting on some kind of reform in Brazil, after the decision of President Bolsonaro in relation to Petrobras, is now completely pessimistic. The dismiss of the president of the state-owned company by social media by the Brazilian president took the market by surprise. Roberto Castello Branco was doing a job praised by the market at the state-owned company, caused Brazilian assets to suffer a high and profound repricing.

According to the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, analysts believe that the accumulated losses in petrobras' market value can reach R$ 100 billion today, January 22, 2021, following the announcement of the government's change of command of the state.

In general, Bolsonaro's intervention is causing a huge loss of value in Brazilian state-owned companies today.

Jair Bolsonaro dismisses the president of Petrobras (PETR3; PETR4) with a post on Facebook

President Jair Bolsonaro announced today, February 19, 2021, in a Facebook post, the resignation of Petrobras President Roberto Castello Branco.

General Joaquim Silva and Luna will take over from Castello Branco, according to Bolsonaro's post.

According to the Website G1, the replacement will only be realized after the approval of the Board of Directors of Petrobras. The state reported that the board has ordinary meeting scheduled for next Tuesday (23) - the agenda of the meeting was not disclosed.

Cost of living in Brazil: population replaces meat by egg due to high food prices in the country

The increase in the price of food in Brazil is changing the diet of the country's population. Even the price of second-rate types of meat are going up a lot.

According to Alexandre Canatella, this change is one of the explanations for the increase in searches for recipes for ground beef, eggs and chicken on the @Cybercook site.

During 2020, the price of meat has changed and and remained very high by Brazilian standards. Now, meat became a luxury item.

According to Conab (Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento) estimates that animal protein consumption was 29.3 kilos per inhabitant in 2020, a 5% drop compared to 2019. It was the lowest level of consumption since the beginning of the historical series, which began in 1996.

New leak exposes more than 100 million brazilian cell phone accounts

PSafe, a leading cybersecurity company in Latin America, has warned of a new data leak, this time involving more than 100 million Brazilian mobile account information. The announcement comes 20 days after the leak, which exposed data from more than 223 million Brazilians, with full name, number of important personal documents, date of birth and other information. The case involves telephone operators: more than 102 million accounts were leaked on the deep web.

Marco DeMello, CEO and founder of PSafe, revealed that the company will send a detailed report with the investigation carried out to the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), linked to the Brazilian Federal Government.

Thus, Brazil is again the scene of a gigantic data leak. These increasingly constant crimes damage the reputation of the country's telephone operators and increase the possibility of cybercrimes and scams against Brazilian citizens.

This time, numerous relevant information from thousands of Brazilians, including President Jair Bolsonaro and famous journalists such as Willian Bonner and Fatima Bernardes, were exposed.

 

In Brazil, the Ministry of Labor decides that any worker who refuses to take the vaccine can be fired

The Brazilian Labor Prosecutor's Office determined that workers who refuse to receive the vaccine against Covid-19 without presenting documented medical reasons may be dismissed for cause.

Although the new norm indicates that the best path is the orientation of workers, that is, that companies invest in raising awareness and negotiating with their employees, the understanding is that the individual and unjustified refusal to vaccination may put the health of workers at risk. other employees. Thus, the employee who does not accept to take the vaccine can be dismissed.

The Supreme Federal Court of Brazil had already decided in 2020 that, although it cannot force anyone to get vaccinated, the State can impose restrictive measures on citizens who refuse to take the vaccine against Covid-19.

After spending months criticizing the coronavirus vaccines, Bolsonaro says he never criticized the vaccines, which is a blatant lie

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, one of the few global liders who fully embraced an anti-vaccine stance, now says he never opposed vaccination.

In the same that Bolsonaro said that he never called covid-19 a "little flu", a claim that was disproven by the videos of him saying just that, now he is saying that he never criticized the vaccines developed by chinese labs. 

According to the FGV professor Oliver Stunkel, "populists with authoritarian tendencies, systematic lying is an important strategy -- not only to anesthetize the population, but also to push the boundaries of what is acceptable little by little".

That's exactly what Bolsonaro is doing now.

Taking vaccines is the best way to protect yourself from a variety of serious diseases and their complications (including death). Bolsonaro's anti-vaccine discourse can cost Brazilian public health a lot, because, it only takes one person to ignore immunization to trigger this whole chain of contamination. So it's important that everyone does their part.

The Brazilian president should now that. And Bolsonaro should know that. And he knows, however, he preferred, for months, to speak out against vaccination, to the point of saying that people could become alligators after they took the vaccine. Yes, he said that.