Brazil’s Death Spiral Accelerates——No Light At The End Of The Tunnel

davidstockmanscontracorner.com / by Denyse Godoy, Filipe Pacheco and Paula Sambo at Bloomberg / September 25, 2015

As Brazilian markets went wild this week, trading desks fell silent.

Unlike previous scares that rocked Latin America’s biggest economy — a 50-minute selloff triggered by a blackout, for example, or fear a corruption scandal is getting ever closer to the presidency — this time around there’s no shouting as clients call to demand updates or computer screens explode with instant messages. Instead, panic has given way to a shocked silence as traders watch markets unravel, according to interviews with half a dozen brokerages.

“There’s a saying that helps explain our mood around here,” saidGuilherme Esquelbek, a currency trader at Correparti Corretora de Cambio in Curitiba, Brazil. “When the sea is this turbulent, the only thing you can do is sit on the sand and watch. It’s not time to get in a boat.”

It’s a startling turnaround for a country that was the darling of international investors just a few years ago. The bonds of oil giant Petrobras, once Brazil’s biggest company, are trading at distressed levels. The Ibovespa stock index fell for a sixth straight session, wiping out about $24 billion in market value. The nation’s currency, the real, is posting the biggest drop this year among major tenders, a collapse one Rio de Janeiro asset manager likened to a “death spiral.”

READ MORE

The post Brazil’s Death Spiral Accelerates——No Light At The End Of The Tunnel appeared first on Silver For The People.