Brazil is still refusing to accept an Israeli ambassador because he was a settler leader in the occupied West Bank. Back in September, the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff rejected the appointment of hardliner, Dani Dayan, as Israel’s envoy to her country. She said that it could be understood as giving support for the illegal Israeli settlements.
2015 was not kind to Brazil.
In addition to a seemingly intractable political crisis that has rendered Congress effectively useless when it comes to passing legislation aimed at shoring up an increasingly precarious fiscal situation, the country is also mired in what might as well be a depression.
Inflation is running in the double-digits, unemployment is soaring, and output has collapsed in the face of an epic downturn in commodity prices, slowing demand from China, and a yuan deval that drove a stake through the heart of the already beleaguered emerging world.
It was just last Thursday when we previewed what we said would likely be further downgrades for Brazil on the heels of S&P's move to cut the country to junk in September.
Here's what we said:
Back in July, we asked if Olympians at the upcoming summer games in Rio would be swimming in feces. “Extreme water pollution is common in Brazil, where the majority of sewage is not treated. Raw waste runs through open-air ditches to streams and rivers that feed the Olympic water sites,” AP explained. “As a result, Olympic athletes are almost certain to come into contact with disease-causing viruses that in some tests measured up to 1.7 million times the level of what would be considered hazardous on a Southern California beach.”
When last we checked in on BTG Pactual, “people were afraid.”
Why? Because the once proud investment bank that billionaire Andre Esteves boasted would be “better than Goldman” is scrambling to raise cash after Esteves’ arrest prompted investors to pull nearly half of their money from the bank’s fixed income funds and triggered a harrowing decline in the company’s equity and debt.