Brazil: The Next United States of America

If Brazil is the next USA then Guyana can be the next Mexico

More like the next Puerto Rico

Guyana will be neither.  Our borders lie too far from their main populated centers.

Then tell us why there's so many braziians setting up shop in guyana. Every way you turn, you see them. I know they're not there to take in the scenery or maybe they still think they're in brazil. Either way, judging from the thread how do you think this will benefit Guyana if there's any.

Yuh saying the PPP gona sell Guyana to Brazil like how spain sold Peurto Rico to the US...have to agree with you there, the Brazilian already owned a good number of business in GT and most of the mining area already..

Perhaps, they lack opportunities in Brazil. I doan understand all the hype about Brazil. Their geography doesn't lend itself to the kind of development the Americans sustain during their development. Americans were visionaries of a better society for all citizens. The Brazilians on the other hand are like the Indians of India-not too keen of the under class.

Let me know ur thoughts. 

Brazil has 200,000,000 people.  How many of Brazilians live in Guyana.

When you find the answer to that you will understand that the Brazil which matters cares not one bit about Guyana.   The Brazil with investment capital, growing markets and large corporations.

Its like some one from Lethem behaving as if that is indicative of all of Guyana.

Let me put it another way.  Suriname Airways runs FOUR NONSTOP flights weekly with JET aircraft....500 seats per week, and this to Belem which allows easy access to larger cities like Sao Paulo and Rio.  So obviously Suriname is more integrated into Brazil than we are.

Tell me how can a Guyanese get to Rio or Sao Paulo without traveling all the way to the moon?

From what I can see what ever Brazil has to offer Guyana, Guyanese havent figured that out yet.   Maybe because the fastest way to get to Sao Paulo is 11 hours.  Fly to Trinidad, then barbados and then on a nonstop flight to Sao Paulo.  Yes Bdos has a nonstop flight to the largest city in South America, and this "South American" country doesnt.

BTW many Guyanese will tell you that the Brazilians are stealing gold from Guyana and doing little to improve our economy, and might even be destroying our interior with their mercury and clear cutting of trees.

Brazil is now a global power. Its economy is one of the top 10.  I am sure that you have heard of the BRIC nations.  The say the "B" and the "C" are what really matters.  

Brazil is now beginning to improve their income distribution and grow their middle class.  Just as the USA figured out that they can let their middle class sink into poverty, do nothing about increased income inequality and watch the nation's youth fall further into an abyss where they will lack access to tertiary level education.

You see Guyanese know about the servant's quarters of Brazil (Roraima) and think that this is all Brazil is.

Having said that Guyanese do not have a clue as to what they can get out of engaging Brazil.

The Brazilians in Guyana are there to steal gold.  They mine it, do not pay any royalties, and then smuggle it over the border....not all but a large portion of it.

Carib,

I still think all this hype about Brazil is only fizzle. Just like the EU, the Global economy, China and India. In the end it doan mean much-ppl living too high above their means.

When you take the measure of a country's economic situation and its place in the hierarchy of nations you have to look at things such as:

1. The Capital market structure - how easy is it for start-ups, for instance
2. The R & D environment - the great universities, the approach by large corporations to have the appropriate research facilities
3. The fiscal regime to encourage business growth
4. The culture of innovation and risk

There are other things to look at.

When you examine Brazil in these criteria and the prospects for its education, technical skills and other areas of growth, you will see how it really isn't the new "America" yet. Same goes for China -another of the BRIC countries.

Manufacturing is 90% of what makes a progressive society. Yuh loose that or as Bill Clinton gave away American wealth in that area to China-took its toll on the American economy. Brazil car production comes mostly to America-ofcourse labour and material is sourced in Brazil.

Brazil has a GDP of $2.5T.  Canada has $1.7T.  Brazil has an economy that the Caribbean has not begun to exploit.  It has the second largest market in the Americas behind the USA. It is an economy in a growth mode, though subject to periodic hiccups.  But just as Guyana is doing well relative to the rest of CARICOM due to high commodity prices, so is Brazil which is also seeing increased consumption as more enter the middle class.

Is it due for a correction at some point?  Sure just as China is?  Should Guyana/CARICOM ignore it?  Well the EU will stagnate and the USA will not grow rapidly and the Asian Tigers are too far for us to take advantage of their markets, beyond their appetite for raw commodities.  But for the first time we will have to learn to market our goods and services outside oF CARICOM w/o the benefit of preferential access.

So that leaves Brazil, which is one of the worlds largest rice importers.  And the grwoing middle class are beginning to travel.

The problem however is thet Guyanese see Brazil in terms of the garimpeiros. You know some what illiterate and primitive people from interior regions of Brazil.  Brazil is Sao Paulo which is larger than NYC and has far more high rise buildings than we have and now dominates the global markets for small jets, beating off even the Canadians.

When we understand this then maybe Brazilians will do more in Guyana than pollute our rivers, steal our gold, and lay waste to our virgin forest.

What Guyanese need to learn is Brazil isnt just a bigger version of Guyana and most Brazilians know nothing about Boa Vista.  Sao Paulo alone has 7 widebodies daily from NYC, and loads of other flights to a range of Brazilian cities from several US cities, and it isnt just US based Brazilians on those planes, but loads of US corporate execs.

Japan is worse off than we are and their economy is more centered on manufacturing than ours is.  If the USA doesnt import China starves.

Indeed Brazil does well because China manufactures product for the US market and imports raw materials from Brazil.

A major weakness of Brazil is the low level of education of the laborforce.  Having said that, it has a rapidly growing economy and its the second largest in the Americas, and it has a well developed agricultural and industrial sector and its largest bank, Itau, is well respected.

The main issue is that the USA's middle class is shrinking and losing access to tertiary level education.  Just as Brazil is placing more emphasis on growing its middle class and educating its people.

We might well meet each other one day.

One advantage the US has over any other country on the planet is its entrepreneural culture. I've seen how business is done by European and Asian countries, and they don't come close to the free market culture of US business. Europeans and Asians say it. Ii don't know much of the Brazilian culture but they are Iberian Latin and mostly Cathoolic, and if I can concede this once to steoretyping I  don't think they are close to the Americans in this area.

Innovation and creativity still happens here in the USA in ways that the rest of the world admires.

Free market is something that works well for a country that imposes itself by military force. Therefore it is not as free as you think. Movies and TV for example. Did you know that the US government actually forces other countries to give triple AAA slots to its TV productions? The same with movies. Weak countries are only left with one week a year to display its own film production in their own cinemas.

Think of Japan, there was a time when everyone though Japan was going to overtake the US economy. The US policy of containment was to force Japan to increase the value of the yen and they also forced the Japanese people to buy American products, even if those products didn't make sense to the Japanese, a country that produced literally everything. The result. Japan was contained and now is stagnant.

They tried to impose the same policy on China. The problem is that it wouldn't work. If China raised the value of the yuan, the effect on the American economy would be inflation since most of the products Americans consume, which are imported from China, would become more expensive. An this is where free market stop working in favor of the USA. Free market in reality only works for the largest economy of the moment and for its closest allies. It will be the same way in 5 years when China becomes the largest economy in the history of the planet. Think of China's current friends as the future rich countries of the world (Brazil who sells them food for example).

A fairly simplistic view.

quote:

Innovation and creativity still happens here in the USA in ways that the rest of the world admires.

Kari, I like that comment, but we have take it with a grain of salt. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook are great examples, but time will tell. My bet is that natural resources and commodities will win out in the end.  

There are several things wrong with what you've written here.

It stretches my credulity that "the US government actually forces other countries to give triple AAA slots to its TV productions".

This is another statement that makes me do a Linda Blair in the Exorcist - you know like when she spins her head around completely - "The US policy of containment was to force Japan to increase the value of the yen and they also forced the Japanese people to buy American products, even if those products didn't make sense to the Japanese, a country that produced literally everything."

You betray a naivete with this also - "If China raised the value of the yuan, the effect on the American economy would be inflation since most of the products Americans consume, which are imported from China, would become more expensive." China is in a dance with the US. They hold our Notes to the tune of $3 trillion. This is an asset that they do not want to jeopardize. Further you should know that raising China's currency value is part of the US thrust to get China to play on a more level playing field. By keeping their currency artificially low they essential practice "dumping" - selling their products at artificially low prices to drown out competition. So I'm not sure what this rambling of yours mean.

Regarding the largest economy of the world in 5 years, the US grew from $$13.9 trillion in 2007 to $15.1 trillion in 2011. During the same period China grew from $3.4 trillion to $7.3 Trillion. The phenomenal Chinese growth rate in that period is slowing down and the slow US rate is due to take off in the next 4 years. Until the Chines pay their workers more I'm not sure where increased demand will come from to allow them to overtake the US in 5 years.

The entrepreneurial traditions of the USA are good for certain sectors.  Unfortunately the vast masses of the population arent in these sectors (the fastest growing areas of employment are in health and education).  This is where we have a problem. 

And the source of the much talked about income inequality.  Evidence of that is new data which shows that the life expectancy for whites with no college education is now shrinking, and those who dropped out of school are now almost as badly off as African American high school drop outs.  The USA is beginning to look more and more like Brazil. 

 For Rev All this is based on data measuring 1990-2008 and the two Bushes were President for most of that era and I bet most of the deterioartion occurred under the last Bush.

Asian societies are fast catching up, and with a laborforce that might be better educated than ours we risk being seen as the biggest consumer market and nothing more.  All that was missing was the ability to develop creative financing and they have closed that gap, and in any case US investors are quite willing to fund Asian projects especially as much of their capital is now being sourced from there.

Brazilians are very entrpreneurial too.  Their problem is that their laborforce is low skill and becoming more expensive so they will not capture the more high end parts of new product development.  Though they have done an excellent job with their agriculture and re-adapting capital equipment to the conditions of under developed nations.  And Brazilian corporations are going to be more visible...Itau Bank being an example.

You are stereotyping about Iberians because Cubans are the most entrepreneurial people in the Caribbean and a visit to Miami should be indicative of that.  As well as a knowledge of the true history of Cuba, not the one peddled by Fidel Castro. They had many fairly large corporations as early as the 50s. Despite not having the protectionist policies typical of latin AMerica of that era.

And what will then happening is that the manufacturing will be done in Asia.  Not only that but with the USA extremely dependent on Asians for product development and innovation how long will we have the intellectual horse power to maintain that.

The Steve Jobs of the 2020s might relocate to Singapore or South Korea to get their companies established, not being able to find American talent.  US PE and other financial institutions will gladly fund his ventures there.

There is a program on BBC World on Saturday afternoon where some folks from Singapore chatter about Asian business opportunities.  As some one living in the USA it is scary to see what they are doing and what we arent.

The biggest advantage that the USA has is the largest and deepest capital markets.  So, as much as they dont want to, we are able to source capital from surplus countries to fund our public and private consumption.  The USA is no longer a capital surplus nation.

So what happens when China's economy slows to the point where they no longer have to worry about how to invest their excess capital?

We run Federal deficits of over $1T with almost 50% of it funded from overseas, largely Asian sources.  So when the US Treasury has a bond issue and no Asians show up can our economy sustain the tremendous spike in interest rates?  Bare in mind the fact that the large US corporations are no longer US in focus and will deploy capital to fund expansion where growth is best...not necessarily in the USA.

Once the Silly Season is over there will be a need to address certain critical issues.

1.  Our collapsing physical infrastructure.

2.  Our social entitlements.

3.  Our outsized Defense role in the world leading to bloated expenditures.

4.  Our collapsing educational system at the secondary level which is rendering US students to be less competitive than many others in advanced nations.  And increasing our dependence on Asians to fill our highest skilled functions...this when many are now quite content to return home to establish companies which will compete with ours.

5.  The disaster which is our healthcare system and its impact on Medicare/Medicaid.

So any one who thinks that the USA has it easy sailing and that we can ignore the rest of the world is fooling themselves.  We can easily become some combination of Japan and Spain.

The Cuban entrepreneurial proclivity may be manifest in Miami. It's been stunted in Cuba....just like....well Guyana under Burnham (but I was going to jerk your chain). Most of those Cuban large firms in the 50s were owned by Americans, not Cubans. And my Iberian stereotyping about their entrepreneurial inclinations or lack thereof came with a qualifier.

a lot of your comments are of a macro nature, and when it comes down to creating products and by extension creating markets I am yet to see another country do it like America. Look at all the new products (whether they derive from bio-med research or space exploration) and new business processes (think WebEx or computers), or financial instruments to spread risks and cover more start-ups in the last 50 years, and you will see why America has separated itself from most countries.

Will not.  Commodities do well when there is strong demand.  If manufacturing dwindles because of slumping consumer demand (the reason why China is slowing) then eventually commodities slump, except maybe gold where demand is more for speculative and as a store of wealth than for industrial purposes.

Cuban entrepreneural traditions APPEAR to be stunted in Cuba because of Fidel Castro.  What the Cubans have done in Miami can just as easly be done in Havana, especially as some will argue, Cubans have sharper technical/quantitative skills than do Americans and will come cheap.  The very day that the Miami Cubans feel confident that they can invest in Cuba you will see how rapidly Cuba changes.  You see, unlike Guyanese, Cubans are very educated and there is a strong cadre of people skilled in the sciences.

You are peddling the Fidel Castro nonsense.  By the 1950s Cubans were taking over many US corporations located in Cuba.  Most of the sugar industry by then was owned by Cubans who also dominated much of their well developed industrial sector.  Cuba was a wealthier and more developed society than any country in the Americas, aside from the USA and Canada, and was ahead of virtually any where in Mediterranean Europe.  Of course the rest of the world in the 50s was quite primitive.

Castro, in order to justify his dictatorship peddled the myth that it was a totally US dominated economy.  And that Cubans were so impoverished. The hypocrisy of this is that his own father was a wealthy sugar baron.

What you need to understand is that an innovator can develop a product any where in the world.  He needs talent and he needs capital.  If thats not available in the USA he will go to where it is available.  Look at how the US corporations scream about the fact that they arent allowed to import Russians and Asians to perform high tech tasks that AMericans cant?  AT some point they will pull up stakes and go to where they can find this talent.  Many Asian countries are spending way more in R&D than we are.  So they might not have the talented FEW who come up with the bright product ideas, but as we speak, are doing their best to lure these innovators to set up shop in their countries.

The USA is in deep trouble and it takes a simpleton (Romney) not to see it. Funny you are an Obama supporter but you are sounding more like Romney.  Obama's heavy emphasis on specific types of tertiary level education and his frequent complaint that Americans are becoming less competitive is because he knows that our domination is slipping and slipping FAST.  Pity most Americans like to look down their noses at the rest of the world and so cant see that Asian train that is about to run them over and not I said ASIAN and not Chinese.

These guys only expressing wishes then again, if cows could fly they would shit right in their eyes. Brazil is far from being a USA very far . They lack the institutions and structures which makes america  the greatest country since the beginning of time .

The USA is declining day by day and a Romney victory will hasten this.

I am not hugely impressed with Obama but I will give him  credit for at least seeing the rot in this country and having ideas that might stop this...even though his ability to implement is thoroughly lacking, in when he controlled by houses of Congress.

Give me a break.  The USA is on the cusp of a hockey-stick recovery grounded in substance.

While we speak US employers are demanding visa entry for at least 160,000 foreign professionals while millions of AMericans cant find work.

Why?

Because our educational system is unable to prepare Americans for the opportunities that are available to them.  So we bring in foreigners. They spend a few years and then return home with their exposure and then set up companies to compete with us.  So jobs are outsourced to India and elsewhere and now even skilled Americans are losing out.

You do know that even tasks performed by investment analysts and entery level lawyers are now being performed in India...and this by Indian entrepreneurs who received exposure to the US marketplace and then take the opportunities else where.

The USA is no longer the dominant country that it once was and with a laborforce that is fast becoming the least educated among the advanced nations (increasingly expanded to include places like Singapore and South Korea) we will soon be of use only to consume what the rest of the world producers. 

Yes the innovative US entrepreneurs headed off shore where they can find a skilled laborforce.

There is still time for the USA to recover but if people like you wave the Stars and Stripes and scream that all is OK when US employers and the President are telling you that we have a problem, the decline will indeed be quite rapid.

PS a labor force participation rate of under 60% and GDP growth of less than 2% only looks good because Europe is so bad.  Yes I will agree that they are even worse off than we are.