Brazil’s president blasted rich nations he blamed for the global financial crisis on Monday, saying their irresponsibility could destroy fiscal strides made in the developing world.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has repeatedly said in the past week that Brazil was well insulated from the financial fallout on Wall Street.
But with Brazil’s Ibovespa stock index plunging 9.4 percent, the local currency dropping hard and the US Congress rejecting an emergency bailout package, Lula lashed out at those he said were responsible for the global financial shocks.
PHOTO: EPA
Rich countries “need to take responsibility” because emerging economies that “have done everything to have good fiscal policy ... can’t be turned into victims of the casino erected by the American economy,” Lula said.
Asked a week ago about the crisis, Lula responded: “What crisis? Go ask [US President George W.] Bush.”
But the impact on Brazil and other emerging nations as investor capital flows out and heads to safer bets like US bonds and gold is beginning to worry leaders.
“We know this crisis is serious, we know that it’s going to reduce worldwide credit, but we’re sure that our exports will continue going well, our industry will continue growing,” he said.
Brad Durham, managing director at EPFR Global, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based fund research firm, said the turbulence hitting Brazil and other developing economies “was due to a perfect storm of bad news.”
He cited the lack of a bailout package in the US, dropping commodity prices and cold credit markets, among other woes.
Additionally, Brazil suffers from being a bellwether emerging market.
Brazil tends to be a “very high beta market, so it reflects perhaps excessively the prevailing mood of global investors — which currently is gloomy,” he said.
Lula said government funding of infrastructure projects deemed vital to Brazil’s economic future won’t be affected because “Brazil isn’t going to throw away this opportunity after so many years of waiting for growth.”
Lula said “that those responsible” for the global financial crisis had to take swift action to end the economic free fall.
“It’s not fair for Latin American, African and Asian countries to pay for the irresponsibility of sectors of the American financial system,” he said.
Lula went on to say that it’s time for the American government “to assume responsibility” for the crisis.
“They created a hole in the financial system,” he said. “They have to take responsibility to fix it to put the world at peace.”
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS