O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

domingo, 29 de outubro de 2017

29 de Outubro de 1929: o dia da Grande Crise - This Day in History (NYTimes)

On This Day: October 29

Updated October 29, 2013, 2:28 pm
On Oct. 29, 1929, stock prices collapsed on the New York Stock Exchange amid panic selling. Thousands of investors were wiped out.

Stocks Collapse In 16,410,030-share Day, But Rally At Close Cheers Brokers; Bankers Optimistic, To Continue Aid



CLOSING RALLY VIGOROUS
Leading Issues Regain From 4 to 14 Points in 15 Minutes
INVESTMENT TRUSTS BUY
Large Blocks Thrown on Market at Opening Start Third Break of Week.
BIG TRADERS HARDEST HIT
Bankers Believe Liquidation Now Has Run Its Course and Advise Purchases
RELATED HEADLINES Leaders See Fear Waning:
Points to "Lifting Spells" in Trading as Sign of Buying Activity
OTHER HEADLINES Grundy For Curbing "Backward States" On The Tariff Bill:Veteran Republican Lobbyist Tells Senate Inquiry the West Needs "Silencing."
Coalition Fighting Move To Kill Tariff:Will Try to Force Through Bill, While Reed Favors Ending Session Nov. 15.
Kahn Refuses Post In Senate Campaign: Calls Choice Unwise:He Writes to Moses to Withhold His Name for Treasurer Due to "Divided Reception."
Missing Airliner Brought in Safely
U.S. Steel To Pay $1 Extra Dividend:American Can Votes the Same and Raises Annual Rate From $3 to $4
Reserve Board Finds Action Unnecessary:Six-Hour Session Brings No Change in the New York Rediscount Rate.
Stock prices virtually collapsed yesterday, swept downward with gigantic losses in the most disastrous trading day in the stock market's history. Billions of dollars in open market values were wiped out as prices crumbled under the pressure of liquidation of securities which had to be sold at any price.
There was an impressive rally just at the close, which brought many leading stocks back from 4 to 14 points from their lowest points of the day.
From every point of view, in the extent of losses sustained, in total turnover, in the number of speculators wiped out, the day was the most disastrous in Wall Street's history. Hysteria swept the country and stocks went overboard for just what they would bring at forced sale.
Efforts to estimate yesterday's market losses in dollars are futile because of the vast number of securities quoted over the counter and on out-of-town exchanges on which no calculations are possible. However, it was estimated that 880 issues, on the New York Stock Exchange, lost between $8,000,000,000 and $9,000,000,000 yesterday. Added to that loss is to be reckoned the depreciation on issues on the Curb Market, in the over the counter market and on other exchanges.
Two Extra Dividends Declared
There were two cheerful notes, however, which sounded through the pall of gloom which overhung the financial centres of the country. One was the brisk rally of stocks at the close, on tremendous buying by those who believe that prices have sunk too low. The other was that the liquidation has been so violent, as well as widespread, that many bankers, brokers and industrial leaders expressed the belief last night that it now has run its course.
A further note of optimism in the soundness of fundamentals was sounded by the directors of the United States Steel Corporation and the American Can Company, each of which declared an extra dividend of $1 a share at their late afternoon meetings.
Banking support, which would have been impressive and successful under ordinary circumstances, was swept violently aside, as block after block of stock, tremendous in proportions, deluged the market. Bid prices placed by bankers, industrial leaders and brokers trying to halt the decline were crashed through violently, their orders were filled, and quotations plunged downward in a day of disorganization, confusion and financial impotence.
Change Is Expected Today
That there will be a change today seemed likely from statements made last night by financial and business leaders. Organized support will be accorded to the market from the start, it is believed, but those who are staking their all on the country's leading securities are placing a great deal of confidence, too, in the expectation that there will be an overnight change in sentiment; that the counsel of cool heads will prevail and that the mob psychology which has been so largely responsible for the market's debacle will be broken.
The fact that the leading stocks were able to rally in the final fifteen minutes of trading yesterday was considered a good omen, especially as the weakest period of the day had developed just prior to that time and the minimum prices for the day had then been established. It was a quick run-up which followed the announcement that the American Can directors had declared an extra dividend of $1. The advances in leading stocks in this last fifteen minutes represented a measurable snapback from the lows. American Can gained 10; United States Steel common, 7 /2, General Electric, 12; New York Central, 14 1/2, Anaconda Copper, 9 1/2; Chrysler Motors 5 1/4; Montgomery Ward, 4 1/4 and Johns Manville, 8. Even with these recoveries the losses of these particular stocks, and practically all others, were staggering.
Yesterday's market crash was one which largely affected rich men, institutions, investment trusts and others who participate in the stock market on a broad and intelligent scale. It was not the margin traders who were caught in the rush to sell, but the rich men of the country who are able to swing blocks of 5,000, 10,000 up to 100,000 shares of high-priced stocks. They went overboard with no more consideration than the little trader who was swept out on the first day of the market's upheaval, whose prices, even at their lowest of last Thursday, now look high in comparison.
The market on the rampage is no respecter of persons. It washed fortune after fortune away yesterday and financially crippled thousands of individuals in all parts of the world. It was not until after the market had closed that the financial district began to realize that a good-sized rally had taken place and that there was a stopping place on the downgrade for good stocks.
Third Day of Collapse
The market has now passed through three days of collapse, and so violent has it been that most authorities believe that the end is not far away. It started last Thursday, when 12,800,000 shares were dealt in on the Exchange, and holders of stocks commenced to learn just what a decline in the market means. This was followed by a moderate rally on Friday and entirely normal conditions on Saturday, with fluctuations on a comparatively narrow scale and with the efforts of the leading bankers to stabilize the market evidently successful. But the storm broke anew on Monday, with prices slaughtered in every direction, to be followed by yesterday's tremendous trading of 16,410,030 shares.
Sentiment had been generally unsettled since the first of September. Market prices had then reached peak levels, and, try as they would, pool operators and other friends of the market could not get them higher. It was a gradual downward sag, gaining momentum as it went on, then to break out into an open market smash in which the good, the bad, and indifferent stocks went down alike. Thousands of traders were able to weather the first storm and answered their margin calls; thousands fell by the wayside Monday and again yesterday, unable to meet the demands of their brokers that their accounts be protected.
There was no quibbling at all between customer and broker yesterday. In any case where margin became thin a peremptory call went out. If there was no immediate answer the stock was sold out "at the market" for just what it would bring. Thousands, sold out on the decline and amid the confusion, found themselves in debt to their brokers last night.
Three Factors in Market
Three factors stood out most prominently last night after the market's close. They were: Wall Street has been able to weather the storm with but a single Curb failure, small in size, and no member of the New York Stock Exchange has announced himself unable to meet commitments.
The smashing decline has brought stocks down to a level where, in the opinion of leading bankers and industrialists, they are a buy on their merits and prospects, and brokers have so advised their customers.
The very violence of the liquidation, which has cleaned up many hundreds of sore spots which honeycombed the market, and the expected ability of the market to right itself, since millions of shares of stock have passed to strong hands from weak ones.
Bids Provided Where Needed
One of the factors which Wall Street failed to take into consideration throughout the entire debacle was that the banking consortium has no idea of putting stocks up or to save any individuals from loss, but that its sole purpose was to alleviate the wave of financial hysteria sweeping the country and provide bids, at some price, where needed. It was pointed out in many quarters that no broad liquidating movement in the stock market has ever been stopped by so-called good buying. This is helpful, of course, but it never stops an avalanche of liquidation, as was this one.
There is only one factor, it was pointed out, which can and always does stop a down swing--that is, the actual cessation of forced liquidation. It is usually the case, too, that when the last of the forced selling has been completed the stock market always faces a wide-open gap in which there are practically no offerings of securities at all. When that point is reached, buying springs up from everywhere and always accounts for a sharp, almost perpendicular recovery in the best stocks. The opinion was widely expressed in Wall Street last night that that point has been reached, or at least very nearly reached.
Huge Blocks Offered at Opening
The opening bell on the Stock Exchange released such a flood of selling as has never before been witnessed in this country. The failure of the market to rally consistently on the previous day, the tremendous shrinkage of open market values and the wave of hysteria which appeared to sweep the country brought an avalanche of stock to the market to be sold at whatever price it would bring.
From the very first quotation until thirty minutes after 10 o'clock it was evident that the day's market would be an unprecedented one. In that first thirty-minutes of trading stocks were poured out in 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 share blocks at tremendous sacrifices as compared with the previous closing. The declines ranged from a point or so to as much sa 29 1/2 points, and the reports of opening prices brought selling into the market in confused volume that has never before been equaled.
In this first half hour of trading on the Stock Exchange a total of 3,250,800 shares were dealt in. The volume of the first twenty-six blocks of stock dealt in at the opening totaled more than 630,000 shares.
There was simply no near-by demand for even the country's leading industrial and railroad shares, and many millions of dollars in values were lost in the first quotations tapped out. All considerations other than to get rid of the stock at any price were brushed aside.
Brokerage Offices Crowded
Wall Street was a street of vanished hopes, of curiously silent apprehension and of a sort of paralyzed hypnosis yesterday. Men and women crowded the brokerage offices, even those who have been long since wiped out, and followed the figures on the tape. Little groups gathered here and there to discuss the fall in prices in hushed and awed tones. They were participating in the making of financial history. It was the consensus of bankers and brokers alike that no such scenes ever again will be witnessed by this generation. To most of those who have been in the market it is all the more awe-inspiring because their financial history is limited to bull markets.
The machinery of the New York Stock Exchange and the Curb market were unable to handle the tremendous volume of trading which went over them. Early in the day they kept up well, because most of the trading was in big blocks, but as the day progressed the tickers fell further and further behind, and as on the previous big days of this week and last it was only by printing late quotations of stocks on the bond tickers and by the 10-minute flashes on stock prices put out by Dow, Jones & Co. and the Wall Street News Bureau that the financial district could get any idea of what was happening in the wild mob of brokers on the Exchange and the Curb.
Peaks Reached in September
The bull market, the most extensive in the history of the country, started in the Coolidge Administration and reached its height with a tremendous burst of speculation in the public utility issues, the flames of speculation being fed by mergers, new groupings, combinations and good earnings.
The highest prices were reached in early September. At that time the market had a quick break and an equally rapid recovery. Then started a slow sag. Two developments, not considered important at the time, served to start the ball rolling downhill. The first of these was the refusal of the Massachusetts Public Service Commission to permit the Boston Edison Company to split its shares; the second was the collapse of a pool in International Combustion Engineering shares on the Stock Exchange, an over-exploited industrial which had been pushed across 100 by a pool and which crashed when the corporation passed its dividend.
In the meanwhile, the Hatry failure abroad had diverted a tremendous volume of selling to the United States, and under these influences the market continued to sag until it literally crumpled of its own weight.

Brasil: o estado das reformas no governo de transicao - Ricardo Bergamini

Deputados perdoam dívidas de igrejas com tributos e INSS
Deputados da bancada religiosa emplacaram o perdão das dívidas das igrejas durante a votação do Refis, o parcelamento de dívidas com a União
A remissão das dívidas de igrejas foi proposta pelo DEM, partido do presidente da Câmara, Rodrigo Maia. | Wilson Dias/Agência Brasil
A remissão das dívidas de igrejas foi proposta pelo DEM, partido do presidente da Câmara, Rodrigo Maia.

Deputados da bancada religiosa conseguiram emplacar, durante a votação do Refis, o perdão de dívidas tributárias de igrejas, além da isenção de impostos para entidades de ensino vocacional por cinco anos.
Os benefícios foram incluídos em duas emendas à medida provisória que criou o Refis, cuja votação na Câmara foi concluída na noite desta terça-feira (3). O texto segue agora para o Senado. A medida permite que empresas e pessoas físicas com dívidas com o fisco parcelem os débitos com descontos de juros e multas.
A remissão das dívidas de igrejas foi proposta pelo DEM, partido do presidente da Câmara, Rodrigo Maia (DEM-RJ), importante aliado do presidente Michel Temer. A emenda recebeu 276 votos favoráveis e 122 contrários.
Com esta inserção, todas as dívidas de igrejas e de instituições de ensino vocacional, inclusive as inscritas em programas de refinanciamento passados, deverão ser perdoadas. Os débitos com a Previdência Social também, assim como as que já foram inscritas na Dívida Ativa da União.
O novo texto não excluiu nem mesmo os débitos decorrentes de fiscalizações da Receita Federal, os chamados “lançamentos de ofício”.
As entidades religiosas e as instituições de ensino vocacional também deverão ficar isentas do pagamento de impostos, por cinco anos, desde que exerçam atividades de assistência social. A emenda recebeu 271 votos favoráveis e 121 contrários.
As alterações não foram negociadas com a equipe econômica, e o governo chegou a ameaçar líderes, informando que se o texto fosse desfigurado, Temer vetaria as mudanças e revogaria a MP que prorrogou o Refis para 31 de outubro.
Políticos aliados do governo já falavam na noite desta terça-feira (3) que Temer vetará as emendas que beneficiam as igrejas, apesar do momento político complicado, em que o presidente precisa evitar confrontos com deputados a fim de garantir os votos necessários para barrar a segunda denúncia apresentada contra ele pela Procuradoria-Geral da República (PGR). A votação da denúncia deverá ocorrer ainda neste mês.
Bolsas de estudo
O plenário da Câmara também acolheu sugestão do Solidariedade benéfica a entidades de ensino superior que converteram dívidas tributárias em bolsas de ensino no Programa de Estímulo à Reestruturação e ao Fortalecimento das Instituições de Ensino Superior (Proies).
Lei aprovada durante o governo da ex-presidente Dilma Rousseff (PT) permitiu a universidades privadas converter dívidas tributárias em bolsas de estudo. A emenda aprovada nesta terça-feira propõe transformar em crédito valores que foram aplicados em bolsas e que superaram as dívidas dessas instituições. Isso reduzirá o pagamento de impostos no futuro.
As mudanças não ficaram por aí. Os deputados votaram favoravelmente à eliminação dos encargos e honorários que incidem sobre a dívida refinanciada. Hoje, o percentual é de 25% e parte é repassada a auditores e procuradores fiscais, responsáveis pela cobrança dos débitos.
Também foram aprovadas alterações no Conselho Administrativo de Recursos Fiscais (Carf), instância em que as empresas questionam cobranças tributárias. Pela proposta, o voto de desempate no conselho será dado a favor do contribuinte.
As mudanças serão ainda analisadas pelo Senado, mas o tempo é curto. O prazo para que a MP seja aprovada pelo Congresso e sancionada pelo presidente se esgota na próxima quarta-feira (11). Se a tramitação não for concluída até lá, todas as condições favoráveis já aprovadas no texto-base do Refis correm o risco de caducar.
Corruptos
Logo no início da votação, os deputados decidiram anular a alteração que havia sido feita no texto do Refis e que poderia abrir brecha para permitir o parcelamento de dívidas de empresas que tenham origem em corrupção.
A votação para a retirada da mudança foi feita de forma simbólica (sem registro nominal dos votos), por meio de acordo entre os partidos.
O artigo 1º da medida havia sido alterado, incluindo a possibilidade de parcelamento e descontos também de débitos apurados pela Procuradoria-Geral da União (PGU).
Na visão de alguns técnicos e políticos, isso poderia dar margem a renegociações, por exemplo, de acordos fechados pelo Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) com investigados por corrupção.
Ricardo Bergamini

O Imperio benevolente: book review sobre ajuda humanitaria nos EUA: Stephen R. Porter

Little on Stephen R. Porter, 'Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed' [review]

by System Administrator

Stephen R. Porter. Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 296 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8122-4856-2.
Reviewed by Branden Little (Weber State University)
Published on H-Diplo (October, 2017)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach
There’s No Place Like Home: Refugees and Their Discontents
Few historical studies could be more applicable to today’s political turmoil than Stephen R. Porter’s Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World’s Dispossessed. Porter’s monograph examines the myriad responses of Americans to refugee populations in the twentieth century and beyond. Benevolent Empire features seven chapter-length case studies that explore refugee-related developments from the era of the First World War to the aftermath of Vietnam. Special emphasis is placed on Jewish resettlement to the United States in the 1930s, the relocation of displaced Europeans after the Second World War, Hungarian refugee programs in the mid-1950s, and Cuban asylum seekers in the decades thereafter. The epilogue pushes the story to the cusp of the present-day Syrian cataclysm.
Porter persuasively demonstrates that favorable admissions policies have provided no panacea to distressed populations seeking new homes in the United States. Resettlement in American communities proved extraordinarily complicated. In many instances, Americans eagerly exploited new immigrants who were unwittingly trapped in sharecropping and other forms of servitude. Depressed labor markets that offered no substantive opportunities for employment further undermined refugees’ integration and bids for self-sufficiency. America’s mistreatment of the very peoples US officials and aid workers purported to be helping elicited justifiable criticisms. Sharp attacks on US policy and practices resulted. Critics included the peoples transplanted to the United States, other “displaced persons” who were abandoned in camps in Europe once American interest in their relocation waned, and foreign governments keen to indict as a sham American claims to being a beacon of liberty.
This chronicle of unpleasantries raises the question: in what ways can such ugliness be construed as benevolent? Porter makes a compelling case that the moniker “benevolent empire” fits because, promises and pitfalls aside, Americans energetically endeavored to extend mercy to the dispossessed. More than one million refugees entered the United States in the period Porter investigates. Many more millions of displaced persons overseas also received emergency aid services from a mixture of US and private American agencies. Certainly millions of dispossessed peoples would have perished without receiving American aid.
The “imperial” edifice that undergirds Porter’s Benevolent Empire comprised the swirling constellation of private- and state-initiated activity that attempted to reduce suffering in war-ravaged lands. American humanitarians customarily prioritized the projection of relief and reconstruction initiatives into a beleaguered nation. Resettlement in the United States, however, did not necessarily eliminate a refugee’s hardships. Benevolent Empire reveals that the Americans who mobilized to mitigate the misery of the dispossessed inadequately appreciated the complexities involved in fully transplanting refugees into American life. American aid organizations, moreover, expected that once a refugee had entered the United States and settled in a particular community the humanitarian duty to help had mostly ended.
The universal condition of many dispossessed peoples was one of enduring distress despite the relative tranquility of American life compared to existence in many refugees’ fractured homelands. Benevolence, therefore, was at best a palliative measure. The American dream did not universally extend to all refugees who relocated to the United States. Porter documents that some refugees (in camps overseas as well as those living in the United States) became so dismayed with American hostility and ineptitude that they returned home even when faced with persecution. Dozens of despondent victims committed suicide.
The richest chapters in Benevolent Empire interweave in-depth biographical treatments of refugees, humanitarian activists, and American officials. Porter’s narrative illuminates fascinating details, for example, about such obscure figures as James Becker, a Jewish American graduate of Cornell University. Becker served as a US soldier in the First World War, participated in Herbert C. Hoover’s postwar American Relief Administration, and then joined the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). As Becker was confronted by atrocity—chiefly pogroms in the Ukraine—his altruism evaporated and he yearned for revenge. Porter notes that Becker returned to the United States in the 1920s but drops the storyline. One wishes Porter’s biography of Becker’s “benevolence” would have continued. Becker’s later service on the JDC’s national council in the 1940s-50s easily could have been tied to the later periods in Benevolent Empire.
Awakened to the humanitarian catastrophe triggered by the First World War, American society and the US government invested extensively in relief and reconstruction. After the war, the federal government relied on private agencies to prescreen refugee dossiers and sponsor refugees by financing their resettlement. Porter establishes that American interest in helping overseas victims of war and discrimination never seriously waned despite virulent xenophobia and popular disenchantment with global affairs in the 1920s-30s. Once the welfare state enlarged during the New Deal and in the Second World War, the appetite of government to regulate private charitable activities enlarged substantially. Increasingly in the aftermath of the Second World War the state arrogated the power to perform humanitarian functions.
The decades-long pattern of refugee aid that Porter portrays is one in which a multitude of private agencies initiated relief projects that government institutions eventually absorbed or regulated. Porter observes that the federal government vigorously encouraged the centralization of relief services by ever larger and more powerful agencies—public and private. He aptly describes the ascendancy of government and its collusion with powerful relief organizations as “regulatory Darwinism” (p. 85). This bias toward wielding federal power through regulatory control, however, undercut the variety of relief initiatives that Americans traditionally embraced. Greater efficiencies and economies of scale resulted from this process, but it also weakened the American public’s activist sensibility, which was accustomed to providing limited aid to the downtrodden with little government support.
Porter uncovers shocking developments in the ostensibly humanitarian US Displaced Persons Program developed in the late 1940s. Avaricious scheming by southern planters ensured that Latvian refugees would be admitted to the United States as sharecroppers. A refugee’s debt peonage in the Mississippi Delta was soon replicated in other farmlands across the United States. Farmers actively sought cheap foreign labor and shielded their reputation from criticism through the benevolent guise of helping the victims of war. Porter highlights an audacious resident of Milwaukee and president of the Latvian Association of Wisconsin, Lauma Kasak, who raised money to purchase the freedom of several hundred immigrant sharecroppers trapped in Mississippi. Porter discovered headstones with Latvian surnames in a local Mississippi cemetery where the sharecroppers labored. Clearly some unfortunate souls never escaped this form of agrarian bondage. Even as it illuminates the underbelly of American humanitarianism, Benevolent Empire does not deeply penetrate the motivations of the Americans who endeavored to acquire European refugees as “stoop laborers” and domestic servants (p. 119). It is unlikely that the paternalistic American sponsors of refugee resettlement thought they were doing their wards any injustices.
Unsurprisingly, even as the Soviet Union blasted the United States for mistreating minorities, it remained silent about its own oppressive, long-term captivity of hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers. Another scholar, Andrew E. Barshay established in The Gods Left First: The Captivity and Repatriation of Japanese POWs in Northeast Asia, 1945-1956 (2013) that the Soviet Union’s punitive forced labor of Japanese veterans continued upwards of a decade after Japan surrendered. The vulnerability of certain populations to the abuses by others in positions of preponderant power constitutes the common theme in Porter’s and Barshay’s investigations of this tumultuous postwar era. Resettlement in new lands and repatriation to homelands remained chronic challenges for millions of peoples whose experience with war did not simply end in 1945.
Displaced persons put into sharp relief the intimate relationship of civil and human rights to the ideological struggles of the Cold War. Benevolent Empire thus builds on the pioneering scholarship of Mary L. Dudziak (Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy [2000]) and Thomas Borstelmann (The Cold War and the Color Line [2009]) by connecting refugee rights advocacy to geopolitics. Porter shows that American programs for refugee aid overseas and resettlement in the United States affected America’s international reputation and relations. Done well, relief and resettlement could enhance America’s stature; done poorly, America’s image suffered—at least temporarily. Demonstrating little introspection and willingness to recalibrate programs for resettlement to address chronic problems, US government and private agencies continued to facilitate the relocation of the dispossessed. And apparently unwitting refugees remained convinced that starting a new life in America was a worthwhile endeavor to pursue.
A central feature in Porter’s, Dudziak’s, and Borstelmann’s studies is the contested definitions of citizenship. At precisely the same time that the United States admitted European refugees to the United States with the assumption they would be put on a pathway to full citizenship, the federal government energetically suppressed aspirations for Puerto Rican independence, while also denying full voting rights to the island’s inhabitants who were nonetheless US citizens. Yet just a few years later, in 1959, statehood was conferred on Hawaii, another American island possession. The rights of citizens within the “Greater United States,” as Daniel Immerwahr has recently dubbed these insular territories, varied considerably.[1]
Oftentimes the express limitations on rights emanated from racial discrimination in the continental United States toward peoples perceived as inferior. Porter emphasizes that even Europeans, including Hungarian revolutionaries who were branded as ardent anti-Communist heroes, were often treated no better by American society than most other minorities in the 1950s. Disadvantaged “second-class” Americans were incapable of wielding power effectively—this was, of course, a major theme of Martin Luther King Jr.’s crusade for economic justice. All chronically “dispossessed” Americans encountered hardships. Refugees, however, have been routinely left out of the standard civil rights narrative. Porter helps to establish their place in this important story. Despite the wide array of resettlement initiatives for refugees, Benevolent Empire intimates that many of the transplanted peoples simply enlarged the ranks of minorities and the poor. And as they competed for scarce social welfare benefits and charitable aid with other longstanding claimants, the refugees discovered blatant hostility. Clearly there were serious stress fractures in the foundation that comprised America’s Benevolent Empire.
Benevolent Empire interweaves a vast and growing literature on humanitarian relief, the international dimensions of American civil rights reform, immigration, and American political development. It would serve advanced undergraduate and graduate students well in any number of courses on these themes, in addition to American foreign relations and “America and the World” seminars. The book repeatedly demonstrates that there is no easy differentiation between domestic and foreign relations. Global affairs were always of intimate interest to Americans, Porter correctly insists.
Porter’s well-crafted study underscores the common feature of the refugee experience: misery. Customarily uprooted by violence, a refugee may remain vulnerable even after being transplanted by a benevolent empire. Undeniably many Americans wanted to help the dispossessed and downtrodden. The question of what constitutes genuine help endures.
Benevolent Empire should stand as a potent reminder that refugee resettlement and aid proved exceedingly difficult to orchestrate. In his epilogue, Porter sagely warns that the seemingly intractable problems associated with mass migrations from North Africa and the Middle East today cannot easily be solved. Relocation alone, he has shown, is no comprehensive solution to alleviating a refugee’s distress; humane resettlement has required expansive commitments that were rarely envisioned by communities that accepted newcomers. If there is any moral in Porter’s account, it would be the imperative need to more fully awaken the humanitarian sensibility among host-nation populations to admit extensive and long-lasting responsibilities for those unfortunate peoples whose homelands have been torn asunder.
Note
[1]. Daniel Immerwahr, “The Greater United States: Territory and Empire in U.S. History,” Diplomatic History 40, no. 3 (2016): 373-391.
Citation: Branden Little. Review of Stephen R. Porter, Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. October, 2017.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=48454
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Sobrevivendo a um ataque de abelhas - Claudio de Moura Castro

Só posso dizer que o relato é impressionante.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida


Escalada, abelhas... e quatro dias na UTI!

Claudio de Moura Castro

Era um passeiozinho menor. A estrada abandonada virou picada e logo acabou. Decidi subir o restante pelo meio do mato. Mas virou escalada. De repente, topo com uma casa de abelhas (das que moram no chão). Não havia volta. Continuei, sendo acompanhado por um séquito cada vez maior das moradoras. Logo perdem a cerimônia e começam a picar. Pouco adiante, perco as forças. Como avançavam nas pálpebras, não conseguia discar o celular. Finalmente, atendeu o gerente do Condomínio que mobilizou o socorro. Duas horas depois, fui achado. Com cordas e grande competência os bombeiros guindam-me do buraco.

Na ambulância, comecei a vomitar abelhas, enquanto me davam adrenalina e morfina. Fui para a respeitada UTI do Hospital João XXIII. Com Gilettes, as enfermeiras retiraram quase mil ferrões. Para a família, a médica informa que julgava o caso perdido. Mas parafraseando Mark Twain, as notícias da minha morte foram amplamente exageradas. Sobrevivi!

Por quatro dias fiquei, como assombração, em uma sala com uma dúzia de camas. À minha frente estava alguém que tentou assaltar um ônibus mas foi defenestrado pelos passageiros. Uma pesada corrente atava seu pé à estrutura da cama e, a porta, policiais brandiam metralhadoras.

Dia e noite, brilhavam as luzes.  Como estão quase todos entubados e parecendo mais para lá do que para cá, as dezenas de funcionários e médicos conversavam, sem qualquer esforço para moderar o volume. Alguns falavam de medicamentos, uma do biquíni novo, outra da troca de turno com a colega. Em certas horas, entravam bandos de estudantes de medicina, bebendo as doutas palavras do médico.

Cada um tinha seu serviço. À minha cama, um vinha com remédio para isso, outro com injeção para aquilo, um medir a glicemia, outro para aplicar insulina, um para fazer eletro, outro examinava os pulmões. A pressão e temperatura eram conferidos amiúde. O toxicologista aparecia de vez em quando. O otorrino, para tirar abelhas do nariz e ouvido. A endocrinologista comandava o espetáculo. Ninguém mais do que eu reconhece a competência de cada um e a capacidade do time de interagir produtivamente com os colegas. Não havia a correria nem o nervosismo dos filmes de TV. Todos numa boa, conhecendo a sua missão.

Mas neste ambiente - e na pobreza orçamentária de um hospital público - a prioridade é manter vivo o corpo. A alma e o conforto do paciente que esperem. Entrei e saí sem por os pés no chão. Não há vaso sanitário ou chuveiro. Todos só de fralda e ganhando banho de gato. Pedi uma pastilha para a garganta, a médica olhou para mim como se estivesse exigindo uma taça de Veuve Clicquot. Tampouco havia pasta e escova de dentes. As pálpebras mordiscadas pediam um banho de soro fisiológico a cada tantos minutos. Era um luxo que os atendentes relutantemente acediam.

Mais dois dias em outro hospital e voltei para casa. Um amigo perguntou-me se tentei  identificar as abelhas na Internet, contemplando as suas fotos. Selecionei meus melhores palavrões para a resposta.

Prata da Casa, livros dos diplomatas - Revista da ADB, n. 96

A revista da ADB deve estar sendo publicada nos próximos dias.
Minhas mini-resenhas da seção Prata da Casa:





Historia economica: 7 encontro internacional, julho 2018, Ribeirao Preto



7a Conferência Internacional de História
Econômica e IX Encontro de Pós Graduação em História Econômica
A 7a Conferência Internacional de História Econômica & IX Encontro de Pós Graduação em História Econômica objetiva dar continuidade aos Encontros de Pós-Graduação promovidos pela Associação Brasileira de História Econômica ABPHE desde 2002. Os eventos serão realizados na Universidade de São Paulo, campus Ribeirão Preto, entre os dias 10 e 11 de Julho de 2018, na Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão Preto (FEARP/USP). Este evento faz parte dos encontros destinados para a apresentação das pesquisas dos alunos de Graduação e Pós-Graduação, contando também com conferência internacional e mesa redonda de professores e pesquisadores reconhecidos na área.
Os trabalhos serão divididos nas seguintes em área:
Brasil e América Coloniais
Brasil e América no século XIX
Brasil e América nos séculos XX e XXI História Econômica Geral
História do Pensamento Econômico História de Empresas

www.abphe.org.br
As propostas de comunicação (textos completos) nas sessões temáticas deverão ser enviadas até o dia 20 de março de 2018 para o endereço eletrônico abphe2018@gmail.com. Favor indicar no título do e-mail a área temática para a qual o trabalho se direciona. A partir dessa etapa, os textos serão enviados para os membros da Comissão Científica, que procederão à avaliação das propostas a partir dos critérios já estabelecidos pela comissão organizadora, a saber:
Pertinência do tema à sessão temática considerada e ao evento em geral;
Relevância do tema em relação ao estado atual da historiografia de cada módulo;
Fundamentação teórica adequada e atualizada;
Identificação de referências bibliográficas essenciais sobre o tema;
Qualidade da pesquisa empírica (quando for o caso);
Rigor lógico da argumentação;
Relevância dos resultados e das conclusões para a área específica em que se insere o trabalho; Redação clara e correta.
Os textos devem ser encaminhados seguindo-se as normas indicadas pela Revista História Econômica & História de Empresas, publicação da ABPHE, a saber:
Os trabalhos devem ter no máximo 30 páginas e estar escrito em português, inglês ou espanhol; Os trabalhos devem ser gravados em formato Microsoft Word, OpenOffice ou RTF (não serão aceitos arquivos em PDF) e conter título, resumo e cinco (05) palavras-chave em português e inglês. Trabalhos submetidos em outros idiomas que não em português devem conter título, resumo e 05 (cinco) palavras-chave no idioma da submissão e em português;
O resumo não deve ultrapassar 10 linhas;
TEXTOS: devem seguir as seguintes especificações: fonte Times New Roman, corpo 12, entrelinhas 1,5;
MARGENS: “normal”, superior e inferior 2,5 cm, esquerda e direita 3,0 cm; TABELAS: devem vir em arquivos Word, inseridas no texto;
GRÁFICOS e PLANILHAS: devem vir inseridos no texto;

FIGURAS, GRAVURAS, ILUSTRAÇÕES e DESENHOS EM GERAL: devem vir inseridos no texto. As imagens digitalizadas devem ter resolução mínima de 600 dpi reais (não interpolados), em tamanho natural. Cromos ou slides devem ter resolução mínima de 2.500 dpi reais (não interpolados). Materiais provenientes de câmeras digitais devem ter resolução mínima de três megapixels sem compressão (módulo high definition).
Todas as TABELAS, GRÁFICOS, FIGURAS, GRAVURAS, ILUSTRAÇÕES e DESENHOS EM GERAL devem ser numerados, acompanhados de legendas e indicação de fonte (de acordo com as normas para citação).
Maiores informações em:
http://www.revistaabphe.uff.br/index.php?journal=rabphe&page=about&op=submissions#authorG uidelines
A divulgação da lista de trabalhos aceitos para apresentação nas sessões temáticas ocorrerá no dia 07 de abril de 2018.

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These titles reflect JSTOR’s high standards for quality content; we’re partnering with a growing list of leading publishers:
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ANU Press
Berghahn Books
Cornell University Press
Edinburgh University Press
Fordham University Press
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Open Book Publishers
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Protecionismo comercial brasileiro: alem de prejudicial, ridiculo - Marcos S. Jank, Jose Tavares Araujo

O interesse público na defesa comercial

Jornal “Folha de São Paulo”, Caderno Mercado, 28/10/2017

Marcos Sawaya Jank (*)
José Tavares de Araujo Jr. (**)

A Camex precisa analisar em profundidade o "interesse público" por trás das sobretaxas do aço

Os defensores da escalada de medidas antidumping aplicadas pelo governo brasileiro desde 2006 costumam argumentar, corretamente, que tais medidas são legítimas e amparadas pelas normas da OMC (Organização Mundial do Comércio). Legais e legítimas, sem dúvida, mas não necessariamente razoáveis e benéficas para a economia como um todo.

Por isso, antes de qualquer decisão, é fundamental verificar os ganhos e as perdas do processo e avaliar se há real interesse público nas medidas propostas.

Um exemplo recente do grau de insensatez da nossa política comercial reside na indústria de laminados de aço a quente, cujos preços afetam, virtualmente, as estruturas de custos de todo o sistema industrial. Entre 2010 e 2016, as importações desse produto caíram de US$ 734 milhões para US$ 88 milhões, ou seja, praticamente desapareceram. 

Mesmo assim, no ano passado o governo tomou duas providências excêntricas. Em julho, abriu uma investigação antidumping contra as importações de aço oriundas da China e da Rússia, que vai seguramente aumentar ainda mais o preço do aço vendido no mercado interno. 

Esse preço tem sido bem superior ao que o Brasil pratica nas exportações do produto. Tanto que há duas semanas a União Europeia impôs elevadas sobretaxas antidumping contra o aço exportado pelo Brasil, usando os mesmos argumentos que o país quer fazer valer contra a China. Não há logica alguma nessa corrente protecionista anacrônica, que, aliás, cria precedentes para outros tipos de aço. Não é para menos que 23 associações de indústrias usuárias de aço se uniram formando uma coalizão contra a sobretaxa.

Não bastasse o antidumping, em novembro o Brasil iniciou processo sobre os subsídios supostamente concedidos pelo governo chinês aos fabricantes de laminados de aço. É a primeira vez que o Brasil contesta os subsídios chineses.

Os chineses entendem que, se o Brasil for adiante e aplicar direitos compensatórios contra os subsídios, estaria claramente tomando partido ao lado dos EUA e da Europa na matéria, países que até aqui lideram essa modalidade de defesa comercial. A retaliação mais evidente cairá sobre as nossas exportações do agronegócio, como já está ocorrendo no caso do açúcar –com a imposição de uma salvaguarda global que só atingiu o Brasil– e da carne de frango, cuja petição inicial sugere a aplicação de taxas antidumping da ordem de 40%.

Alguns dirão que isso tudo tem a ver com a polêmica do reconhecimento da China como economia de mercado. Mas, no nosso entendimento, o que realmente está em jogo é a falta de visão estratégica sobre o interesse nacional em geral e os rumos da política comercial em particular.

Há 15 anos rejeitamos a construção de blocos econômicos com países americanos e europeus. Agora estamos irritando a China, a Rússia e outros parceiros emergentes, com esse neoprotecionismo surreal cumulativo, que prejudica a nossa competitividade e capacidade de inserção nas cadeias globais de valor.

É fundamental que a Camex analise em profundidade o "interesse público" que haveria por trás das sobretaxas de antidumping e anti-subsídios no aço. No nosso entendimento, elas vão fortalecer o poder de mercado dos fabricantes de aço, prejudicar o resto da economia e irritar o principal parceiro comercial do país, atingindo o agronegócio exportador.

Em vez de ficar atirando bravatas xenofóbicas contra a competitividade conquistada pelo resto do mundo, deveríamos, sim, refletir seriamente sobre os vetores que nos jogaram para trás nesses últimos anos e avançar nas reformas estruturais que nos recolocariam no planeta. 

(*) Marcos Sawaya Jank é especialista em questões globais do agronegócio. Escreve aos sábados, a cada duas semanas.
(**) José Tavares de Araujo Jr. é doutor em economia pela Universidade de Londres e sócio da Ecostrat Consultores. Email: jtavares@ecostrat.net