Insolvencia, bancarrota, calote: velhos problemas latino-americanos, agora nas capitais do Imperio

Pois é, quem diria: a irresponsabilidade dos políticos latino-americanos, proverbial ao longo de quase 200 anos de história, parece ter se deslocado um pouco mais ao norte.
Agora são dezenas de cidades americanas, e alguns estados -- o caso da Califórnia já é conhecido -- a entrarem em insolvência e serem obrigados a declarar bancarrota.
Tudo bem quando o processo é negociado com os credores, mas por vezes o calote se manifesta de forma mais insidiosa.

Harrisburg, Pa., other cities overwhelmed by economic downturn and debt
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 21, 2010; A01

HARRISBURG, PA. -- This city has a $68 million bill coming due before year's end, an impossible sum that is larger than its annual budget. It's a predicament caused by extravagant borrowing and spending, and now there are only unpleasant fixes: steep tax increases, severe layoffs and crippling service cuts, even bankruptcy.

It's a story that could be repeated across the country as cities and towns deal with the lingering consequences of the economic downturn and mounting debt.

The obligations of state and local governments have doubled in the past decade, to $2.4 trillion, according to a recent Federal Reserve report, a figure that excludes more than $1 trillion in unfunded pension and retiree health-care liabilities.

Generally, economists are not alarmed by increasing government debt during recessions because it stokes much-needed economic activity. But this time, concerns are deepening that the debt burden is too large for some municipalities to handle, forcing them into draconian service cuts or large tax increases, both of which would be a drag on the sputtering recovery. Beyond Harrisburg, other cities might have to default on their loans because most states are too strapped to bail them out.

Harrisburg's crisis has been precipitated by a malfunctioning municipal incinerator, whose ill-fated expansion was promoted as a potential moneymaker. But after seven years of cost overruns, construction delays, design problems, financings, refinancings and more refinancings, the city is on the hook. The $68 million bill is part of $288 million in outstanding debt related to the project.

The debacle is pushing the 150-year-old state capital toward default. The fiscal crisis has shaken the city, which over the past decade has spruced up its riverfront downtown and created tourist attractions in large part through low-cost financing afforded by municipal bond sales. In one notorious example, former mayor Stephen R. Reed spent nearly $8 million from the public authority that owns the incinerator to buy wagon wheels, rifles and other memorabilia for a Wild West museum that never opened. And like a homeowner who binged on cheap financing, this city is underwater financially.

"The truth is, we are already insolvent," City Controller Dan Miller said.

Harrisburg is among an increasing number of municipalities showing signs of extreme fiscal stress. Squeezed by rising unemployment, plummeting tax revenue and growing employee costs, Vallejo, Calif., filed for bankruptcy two years ago. Jefferson County, Alabama's largest county, teeters on the edge of bankruptcy after a complex interest rate swap on a $3 billion sewer project went awry.

Last month, Central Falls, R.I., an impoverished city not far from Providence, put its finances in the hands of a receiver, who might have to rewrite contracts, cut pensions and restructure debt. Meanwhile, the nation's leading debt-rating agencies have relegated seven cities -- including Detroit, Harvey, Ill., and Woonsocket, R.I. -- to junk bond status, vastly increasing their borrowing costs.

A 'terrible problem'
Citing the growing amount of money owed by local governments, noted investor Warren E. Buffett (a director of The Washington Post Co.) this month told a federal commission examining the roots of the financial crisis that coming years will bring a "terrible problem" for municipal debt.

"Clearly, there are budget issues, and they are probably worse now than they were six months ago. And they will get worse," said Matt Fabian, managing director of Municipal Market Advisors, a Massachusetts firm tracking the municipal bond market. "To this point, cities and states have gone after other stakeholders for relief -- employees, taxpayers, contractors -- and they have not moved to take assets away from investors."

Just a small number of defaults could shake confidence in the municipal bond market, which is considered a safe harbor for investors because it is assumed that the cities and towns that sell bonds can always raise taxes to pay them off. But with total debt growing rapidly, and taxpayers and politicians showing greater resistance to new levies, those old assumptions are being tested. Local governments rely on municipal bonds to raise money for major construction projects. Roads, bridges, dams, senior citizen homes, mass transit lines, schools and playgrounds are paid for through the municipal bond market, which offers governments access to low-cost financing just as mortgages allow people to buy homes.

In the past, the bond market's importance motivated officials to do all they could -- including raising taxes and cutting services and personnel -- to make payments. If cities miss payments or show severe fiscal stress, their bond ratings are cut, significantly increasing borrowing costs and making it more difficult to emerge from debt. Even when municipalities file for bankruptcy, "the tradition is that bondholders get paid in full," said James E. Spiotto, a Chicago lawyer specializing in public financing. "The reason is that without access to the bond market, cities can't function."

When municipalities couldn't help themselves, their states usually stepped in. Cleveland defaulted on more than $15 million in bonds in 1978 but was able to refinance them not long after. Also in the 1970s, New York was lifted from a financial hole with state help. More than a decade later, Pennsylvania bailed out Philadelphia.

Since 1980, just 245 municipal entities have filed for bankruptcy, the majority special districts and other entities, such as housing developments and subdivision infrastructure projects, that were unable to raise taxes on their own. "We'll undoubtedly see a few more cities than usual consider defaulting, but it is by no means the norm," said Chris Hoene, director of research at the National League of Cities, which represents the interests of the nation's 19,000 municipalities. "For the most part, these are going to be rare instances."

Bleak forecast
But local and state governments face bleak revenue prospects as the lagging effects of the recession cut into tax receipts and increase pension-fund losses, making it harder for them to keep pace with their debt.

With Pennsylvania facing a deep deficit, few people expect it to offer a bailout to Harrisburg. The city's crushing incinerator debt comes atop a $9 million deficit in the current budget, creating an unprecedented fiscal crunch that has left the new mayor and other leaders of this 50,000-resident city weighing unsavory options.

Harrisburg's 1972-vintage incinerator required repeated repairs -- and refinancings -- that put the project $94 million in debt before the federal government ordered the incinerator shut in 2003 because it was spewing toxic dioxin. Faced with eating that debt or refurbishing the plant, former mayor Reed led a push to invest $125 million in incinerator expansion and upgrades. The idea was to create a facility that would draw trash -- and revenue -- from nearby counties and produce steam and electricity that could be sold to local utilities.

But construction delays and design problems surfaced, causing the city to borrow even more millions. The city eventually brought in a new operator, who required more money to get the incinerator going. When the plant was finally operational, it never attracted the envisioned business. Now its steam line is broken, as is one of the turbine blades, eliminating steam sales and reducing its electricity production. The result is that the city has missed several debt payments, which have been made by other bond guarantors.

"Basically, the construction project was a failure," said William J. Cluck, a lawyer who served on the incinerator board.

Not only is the city contemplating layoffs in its 537-employee workforce, it is asking for contract rebates, considering the sale or long-term lease of revenue-producing assets, including parking garages and water and wastewater systems, and asking creditors to restructure and forgive debt.

"We all need to take some hits. I'm not going to let the city sink. I'm not going to let the city auction off all its assets and have nothing while everyone walks away with a sweeter deal just by renegotiating and restructuring and taking us further and further out, and you still get every dime you had in the beginning of the deal," said Mayor Linda D. Thompson, who added that she wants to avoid bankruptcy. "I'm not willing to do that."

Miller, the controller, said the city's least painful path would be bankruptcy -- a once unthinkable option. "When you say the word 'bankruptcy' people conjure up all kinds of images," Miller said. "Bankruptcy is merely a tool to turn things around and get us on stable financial ground."

Drogas: ONU quer transferir mais lucros do comércio ilegal para paises produtores

Opa!: vai ter dinheiro para nós também. Atenção Afeganistão, alerta Birmânia (ou Mianmar, como quiserem), preparem-se Colômbia, Bolívia e outros produtores de drogas, opiáceos e outros alucinógenos:
a ONU quer vir em ajuda de vocês, e garantir que uma parte maior dos enormes lucros obtidos com o comércio ilegal de drogas possam vir em ajuda dos seus projetos de desenvolvimento.
Desculpem se estou fazendo uma intepretação capciosa, mas é isso que eu entendo desta matéria: a ONU não quer que todo o lucro fique apenas com os países consumidores (ricos, obviamente), e pretende que uma parte disso seja repartida com os produtores (todos pobres, mas apenas por enquanto, pois quando os planos da ONU derem certo, eles vão ficar um pouco mais ricos).
Já estou imaginando os protestos dos países intermediários, como Venezuela, Brasil, México e outros: "Nós também queremos nossa parte desse bolo. Não é justo que só os produtores ganhem um pouco mais. Nós que também participamos desse lucrativo negócio, que corrompemos nossos soldados e policiais, que compramos políticos e mantemos redes sofisticadas de embarque disfarçado, queremos pelo menos 15 ou 20% do que a ONU for distribuir."
Voilà, com os conselheiros econômicos da ONU, tudo fica melhor no mundo das drogas.
Nova ordem econômica internacional das drogas, agora. Uma questão de justiça...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Países ricos retienen las mayores ganancias del narcotráfico: ONU
Notimex, 17/06/2010

Los países que cultivan la mayor parte de las drogas ilícitas reciben mayores críticasm pero los mayores ingresos se quedan en los países de destino, afirma.

Nueva York - En Estados Unidos, Canadá y Europa se queda la mayor parte de las ganancias de la venta de droga en el mundo, que en el caso de la cocaína representa un 70 por ciento de los 72 mil millones de dólares traficados al año, informó hoy la ONU.
“Los países que cultivan la mayor parte de las drogas ilícitas en el mundo, como Afganistán en el caso del opio y Colombia en el caso de la coca, son los que reciben mayor atención y críticas”, indicó la Organización de Naciones Unidas (ONU) en un estudio.
“Sin embargo, la mayor parte de las ganancias se quedan en los países ricos de destino”, afirmó el organismo en su análisis titulado “La globalización del delito: evaluación de la amenaza del crimen organizado trasnacional”.
El reporte, elaborado por la Oficina de la ONU contra las drogas y el delito, señaló que en el caso de la cocaína, las ganancias se quedan en su mayoría en manos de los proveedores de enervantes de los países consumidores.
Indicó que el mercado de la cocaína está en declive, debido a una menor demanda y a un incremento en el cumplimiento de la ley, lo que “ha generado una guerra por territorios y nuevas rutas entre bandas de traficantes, particularmente en México”.
Mientras, sólo 5.0 por ciento de los 55 mil millones de dólares de las ganancias del tráfico de heroína en el mundo se queda en manos de los traficantes, insurgentes y agricultores afganos.
El informe, presentado en el Consejo de Relaciones Exteriores de Nueva York, incluye análisis sobre tráfico de cocaína y heroína, armas de fuego, productos falsificados, recursos naturales robados, personas vendidas por sexo o para ser forzadas a trabajar, piratería y delitos informáticos.
“El crimen organizado se ha globalizado y se ha convertido en uno de los mayores poderes en el mundo, tanto en términos económicos como de armamento”, dijo el director ejecutivo de la Oficina de la ONU contra las drogas y el delito, Antonio María Costa.
El estudio también concluyó que entre 2.5 y tres millones de inmigrantes son introducidos de manera ilegal de América Latina a Estados Unidos, lo que genera ingresos de seis mil 600 millones de dólares para los traficantes.
Estimó que existen 140 mil víctimas de tráfico humano con el propósito explotarlos sexualmente tan sólo en Europa, lo que genera un ingreso anual de tres mil millones de dólares para los traficantes.
Calculó que el mercado ilícito de armas de fuego es de entre 170 millones y 320 millones de dólares por año, lo que representa entre 20 y 30 por ciento del mercado legal.
Además estimó que el número de ataques de piratas en el llamado Cuerno de África se duplicó en 2009, para alcanzar los 217 incidentes, de los 111 registrados en 2008.

Mais miseria da educacao: cotas raciais validas, diz ministro

O relator do projeto, Senador Demóstenes Torres, pensava que tinha eliminado a possibilidade de cotas racistas nos processos de seleção, e agora o ministro da (Des)Igualdade Racial diz que não, que o estatuto garante a aplicação de cotas pelas universidades públicas.
Creio que temos mesmo de passar pela completa decadência do ensino, pelo acirramento das relações raciais no Brasil para que as pessoas tenham consciência do monstro político que está sendo criado com essa famigerada lei, o Estatuto da (Des)Igualdade Racial, na verdade um instrumento racista que implanta oficialmente o racialismo no Brasil.
Adeus Brasil nação, bem-vindo Apartheid.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Para ministro da Igualdade Racial, estatuto é "extraordinário" e garante política de cotas
Gilberto Costa
Agência Brasil, 18/6/2010

Presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tem 15 dias para sancionar o Estatuto da Igualdade Racial, aprovado esta semana

O sociólogo Wilson Carlos Duarte Araújo já era aluno veterano de graduação quando a Universidade de Brasília (UnB) iniciou o regime de cotas para ingresso de negros no curso superior (2004). Ele avalia que a universidade mudou desde então e deu condições para a construção de uma nova imagem para os negros.

"As cotas abriram a possibilidade de que os negros fizessem parte da elite. Você já percebe na sociedade mudanças na forma como uma pessoa negra como eu pode ser representada. Começam a mudar as expectativas com relação a mim: hoje em dia eu não sou mais aquele cara que deve ser o servente. Eu posso ser um aluno da universidade, eu posso ser um professor ou qualquer outra coisa", contou à Agência Brasil.

Para o ministro da Secretaria de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial, Eloi Ferreira de Araújo, o Estatuto da Igualdade Racial, aprovado na quarta-feira (16/6) pelo Senado Federal, criou base legal para as políticas de cotas nas universidades e outras políticas afirmativas.

"A lei não trabalhou com proibição, a lei trabalhou com inclusão", disse, afirmando que a partir da nova lei "o poder público adotará ações de política afirmativa no sistema de cotas para educação".

Em sua avaliação, os questionamentos que a política de cotas sofre na Justiça, como a Arguição de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental (ADPF) nº 186 movida no Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) pelo partido Democratas (DEM), caducarão. "Quando o presidente sancionar a lei, a arguição vai ficar muito enfraquecida. Agora nós temos a legislação", salientou ao dizer que a ação no STF é "impertinente" e "inoportuna": "a sociedade já havia reconhecido a política de cotas como uma realidade".

Na opinião do ministro, o Estatuto da Igualdade Racial estabelece em lei o conceito de ação afirmativa que servirá como "guarda-chuva" para criação de incentivos fiscais a empresas que contratem negros, para o acesso à terra, para a valorização da cultura, para realização de pesquisas e para outros direitos.

"O avanço é muito substantivo. Não há nenhuma legislação desde 1888 [Abolição da Escravatura] que reúna tantas possibilidades. Essas possibilidades se colocam como ponto de partida: é daqui para frente", comemorou.

Para o ministro da Igualdade Racial, a lei aprovada pelo Senado é "extraordinária" e uma "vitória fantástica". "Com esse estatuto nós colocamos uma argamassa poderosa na consolidação e sedimentação da nossa democracia. Fora do ambiente democrático, nós não teríamos condições de discutir esse tipo de matéria sobre a inclusão de negros e negras. Com a inclusão de negros e negras damos um passo definitivo na consolidação da democracia", avaliou.

O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tem 15 dias para sancionar o estatuto.

Miseria da educacao no Brasil: perdas agora e para a frente

Leiam a matéria abaixo. Estarrecedora.
O Brasil, como já disse Roberto Campos, é um país que não perde a oportunidade de perder oportunidades.
Tudo isso era previsível e esperado. Há pelo menos 15 anos ouço falar da carência de professores de ciências (física, química) e de matemática para os cursos médios.
Os alunos simplesmente saem despreparados, razão da enorme evasão nesses cursos: eles não conseguem acompanhar.
E o pior é que estamos caminhando para o pior, justamente.
Com bobagens obrigatórias como as que foram introduzidas pelos companheiros -- espanhol e estudos afrobrasileiros no primário, filosofia e sociologia no curso médio -- a previsão é que continuemos a formar perfeitos analfabetos nas ciências elementares e nas matemáticas.
O Brasil perde, todos perdemos.
Acho que isso não se corrige facilmente. Daí meu enorme pessimismo educacional.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

País perde US$ 15 bi com má formação de engenheiro
Agnaldo Brito
Folha de S. Paulo, 21.06.2010

De 150 mil que entram em engenharia, 30 mil se formam

A baixa qualidade do ensino médio, sobretudo em disciplinas como física, química e matemática, tornou-se obstáculo para a formação de engenheiros no Brasil. Essa falha, agravada pela alta demanda gerada com o crescimento do país, tem custo -e não é pequeno.
Cálculos de entidades de engenharia mostram que o país perde US$ 15 bilhões (R$ 26,5 bilhões) por ano com falhas nos projetos das obras públicas. A cifra, equivalente a 1% do PIB, foi apresentada em encontro nacional de engenheiros, em Curitiba, na semana passada.
A reunião levou à capital do Paraná 850 engenheiros de todo o país com o único propósito: buscar meios de frear a crise sem precedentes da engenharia nacional.

GUERRA
A CNI (Confederação Nacional da Indústria) calcula que 150 mil vagas de engenheiros não terão como ser preenchidas até 2012. Tamanha demanda diante da falta de profissionais criou uma guerra por engenheiros.
Em 2003, a formação de um engenheiro custava US$ 25 mil. Hoje, US$ 40 mil, diz a IBM, uma das empresas que mais contrataram engenheiros e técnicos de computação desde quando o Brasil tornou-se base mundial para oferta de serviços.
Essa escassez já atinge a competitividade brasileira. Em 2009, exportamos US$ 1,5 bilhão em serviços. Só a IBM respondeu por US$ 500 milhões. A Índia exportou US$ 25 bilhões, disse Paulo Portela, vice-presidente de Serviços da IBM, em seminário promovido pela Amcham, em São Paulo.
Essa disputa por engenheiros não ajuda. Vamos perder se entrarmos numa guerra e ampliar a inflação dos custos da mão de obra. O salário inicial, de R$ 1.500 em 2006, já atinge R$ 4.500.

EVASÃO
O diagnóstico da realidade nos 1.374 cursos no país mostra que a evasão nos cursos de engenharia é de 80%; dos 150 mil que ingressam no primeiro ano, 30 mil se formam.
Só um 1 em cada 4 possui formação adequada. O Brasil forma menos de 10 mil engenheiros com competência e esses são disputados pelas empresas, diz José Roberto Cardoso, diretor da Escola Politécnica da USP, uma das mais importantes faculdades de engenharia do país.
A Amcham (Câmara Americana de Comércio) quer o tema na campanha eleitoral. O documento com o diagnóstico e as propostas compiladas por Jacques Marcovitch, professor da USP e conselheiro do Fórum Econômico Mundial, será entregue ao governo e aos candidatos.
É certo que ficará para o próximo governo a busca da resposta para a pergunta: Por que o jovem quer ser médico e advogado e não quer ser engenheiro e professor de matemática?.
Exemplo de baixa procura pela área ocorreu em concurso para professor de física em São Paulo. De 931 vagas, só 304 foram preenchidas.

7 a 0: minha recomendacao a certo time...

Bem, se fosse eu, e conhecendo os precedentes, trataria de pedir asilo coletivo.
A alternativa é o Gulag, de retorno ao lar (se o termo se aplica, claro).
Mas, isso deve ser feito agora, se possível ainda com a roupa molhada de suor.
Se esperarem muito, os gorilas habituais vão controlar todos os seus movimentos.
Sorry, boys, não dava mesmo para vencer essa.
Mas, a vergonha do score pode induzir um baixinho invocado a gestos inesperados (ou esperados e previsíveis...).
A escolha é de vocês...

The BRICs: The trillion-dollar club - The Economist

The BRICs
The trillion-dollar club
The Economist, April 15th 2010

Brazil, Russia, India and China matter individually. But does it make sense to treat the BRICs—or any other combination of emerging powers—as a block?

IN ANY global gathering, the American president is usually seen, at a minimum, as primus inter pares: the one who can make or break the final bargain and select his favoured interlocutors. So in Copenhagen last December, as negotiations for a new climate-change treaty were entering their final hours, a hastily convened meeting between Barack Obama and China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, looked as if it would be the critical moment when a deal might be struck. But when the president turned up, he found not only Mr Wen but the heads of government of Brazil, South Africa and India. This was unexpected. The Americans even thought the Indians had already left the summit. What was conceived as a bilateral talk turned instead into a negotiation with an emerging-market block. As an additional sign that things were changing in the world, the president got a finger-wagging from one of Mr Wen’s hangers-on. But at least Mr Obama was in the room; Europeans were shut out while the emerging powers and America put the final touches to their deal.

This week the same developing countries are meeting again, in Brasília. On April 15th Brazil, India and South Africa—rising powers that are also democracies—put their heads together. The next day South Africa will drop out and Russia and China will join the party, to create a meeting of the so-called BRICs.

For this group, it is a second summit; last June their leaders met in Yekaterinburg, in Russia. That inaugural summit, which produced almost nothing concrete, appeared to be a one-off event and could be ignored. But the foursome is starting to establish a record. BRIC foreign ministers have met annually since 2006. Finance ministers and central bank heads meet frequently. This week, in addition to the leaders’ summit, there are gatherings in Brazil of BRIC commercial banks, BRIC development banks, and even BRIC think-tanks.

The term itself was coined by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street bank, and is sometimes written off as just a gimmick aimed at tempting punters. But is it now the case that life, in a serious way, is imitating investment analysis? Are the BRICs developing a momentum of their own? If so, what difference might that make to the rest of the world?

Life imitates Goldman Sachs

The BRICs matter because of their economic weight. They are the four largest economies outside the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the rich man’s club). They are the only developing economies with annual GDPs of over $1 trillion (Indonesia’s is only half that). With the exception of Russia, they sustained better growth than most during the great recession and, but for them, world output would have fallen by even more than it did. China also became, by a fraction, the world’s largest exporter. Meanwhile, the BRICs are also increasing their trade with one another: Chinese-Indian trade has soared and is likely to reach $60 billion this year. China has also become the largest market for the fast-industrialising countries of East Asia. Less happily, China has become the largest spewer-forth of carbon dioxide, emitting 6.5 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2008, or 22% of the world’s total. Russia is third and India fourth on this particular roll of shame.

The most striking sign of the BRICs’ significance to the world economy, though, is probably their share of foreign-exchange reserves. All four are among the ten largest accumulators of reserves, accounting for 40% of the world’s total. China is easily the largest, with a staggering $2.4 trillion, enough to buy two-thirds of all the NASDAQ-quoted companies. It is the world’s second-largest net creditor after Japan (the net credit position takes account of equities as well as debt). Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves were virtually zero when it began market reform in 1992; now they stand at $420 billion. If the BRICs were to set aside one-sixth of their reserves, they could create a fund the size of the IMF.

Foreign assets provided cushions against the great recession and helped turn the BRICs into financial powers as well as economic ones. Even as most Western countries struggle to rein in record budget deficits and soaring debts, the BRICs’ public-debt levels are mostly modest and stable (India is a partial exception). Most investment banks offer BRIC funds. The world’s top two banks are Chinese.

This macro performance is being translated into different sorts of influence. Perhaps the most important is an intangible one: that of reputation. In some respects, the BRICs share a distinctive view of the world. They have large domestic markets with substantial numbers of poor people, so growth and anti-poverty programmes are higher up their list of concerns than in Western countries (this is even true in Russia, though to a lesser extent). They are trying to diversify their economies. They are innovating (though Russia is much better at producing guns than civilian goods) and challenging received notions about globalisation (see our special report). All have become far more entwined with the world economy. But the BRICs have opened up without the full market liberalisation championed by the “Washington consensus”. In the aftermath of the great recession, this mongrel position commands respect in other developing countries, which want to know how the BRICs did it. “The BRICs aren’t exactly an alternative to the Washington consensus,” says Mathias Spektor of the Getúlio Vargas foundation in Brazil, “but they provide other models to emulate and are effective at expressing something distinctive in economic affairs.”

An acronym in search of a role
Wealth may produce market power and even soft power. But it does not necessarily generate geopolitical heft. Rich Japan and Germany deliberately adopted a “big Switzerland” policy of hiding their light under a bushel for decades. Even now, they throw their weight about reluctantly.

But there are several reasons for thinking that the BRICs might be different. Germany and Japan had a golf-sized American security umbrella for shelter. But international institutions are now in flux. Robert Hormats, America’s under-secretary of state for economic affairs, compares the 2010s to the late 1940s: “The post-war period was so different from the pre-war one that it needed new institutions. The turn of the 21st century is similar, especially after the financial crisis.” He argues that “you can’t go back to having the system run by a few rich economies. Our big challenge is to work out how large emerging economies integral to the financial and trading system take some responsibility for maintaining it.”

One reason the BRICs matter is that the world’s most important country thinks they do, and is willing to rope them into decision-making. America’s means of doing this is the G20. It pushed for the group’s expansion to include the BRICs and declared the club the chief forum for dealing with international economic issues. The BRICs and the original group of seven rich countries (G7) form natural blocks within the G20. So far, the clearest expression of a coherent BRIC agenda—for reform of the international financial system and more domestic stimulus programmes—came on the eve of a G20 meeting in 2008.

A second reason why the BRICs matter is that all four giants have reasons for creating a new club of their own. China’s leaders know their time has come. They want to enhance their own influence and reduce America’s. But at the same time their leaders hew to Deng Xiaoping’s dictum that “China should adopt a low profile and never take the lead.”

The BRICs, which the Chinese calls jinzhuan siguo, or four golden brick nations, are a way to square that circle. By teaming up with others (which are anyway attractive as raw-materials suppliers), China can hide its national demands behind a multilateral façade. And a meeting of the BRICs looks slightly more like a collection of equals than do most gatherings involving China (though China’s economy is still larger than those of the other three combined). China sees climate-change diplomacy as a way of boosting its soft power, and as part of its bilateral relationship with America (its stubborn behaviour in Copenhagen notwithstanding). But it does not want to break with the rest of the developing world on climate issues. Co-ordination with other “emerging” polluters helps it to succeed on all these fronts.

This balancing act applies to the other BRICs. All want to soften the impact of China’s rise. The BRIC forum is an alternative to what they all (perhaps even China itself) regard as a nightmare: a G2 of America and China. They all also want, in the words of Brazil’s foreign minister, “to increase, if only at the margin, the degree of multipolarity in the world”.

India has been profoundly disappointed by traditional multilateral diplomacy. Years of pushing for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council have got it nowhere. The BRICs can hardly be worse. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been trying to expand Brazil’s diplomatic influence beyond Latin America. The BRICs help him fulfil these geopolitical ambitions. (Whether Lula’s successors will share his taste for the world stage is an open question: at the moment, both likely successors seem more concerned about domestic matters.) As for Russia, association with some of the most dynamic economies in the world may perhaps divert some attention away from its own decline. More important for Russia, as for all the others, the BRICs are a way of telling America that the largest developing countries have their own options and that not all roads lead to Washington.

Because of this, some members of America’s Congress look on the BRICs with trepidation. The main focus of their concern is China’s currency. But there are other reasons why the BRICs might damage the global economic system, rather than buttress it. They might, for example, undermine the role of the IMF and World Bank, abandon attempts to expand free trade or even just ride roughshod over aid conditions in poor countries. But Mr Hormats thinks they will not. “They understand,” he argues, “that the openness and smooth functioning of the system is vital to them and so far there has been very little evidence that they want to change it dramatically.” When world output was plummeting last year, the BRICs’ economic stimulus programmes did a lot to stabilise it. And on the question of reforming the international financial institutions, America and the BRICs find themselves on the same side.

Without straw
A more compelling reason for doubting the BRICs’ chances of changing anything fundamental is that they are not capable of it. They lack coherence. They compete as much among themselves as they do with America or Europe—and hence the BRICs as a club seem unlikely to match the force of their individual ambitions.

Two are authoritarian; two are noisy democracies. Three are nuclear powers. Brazil is not, though it had a nuclear-weapons programme which it abandoned in the 1980s; in 2009 the vice-president said he personally thought Brazil should build its own bomb and the country plans a nuclear-powered submarine to patrol offshore oilfields. Two have permanent seats on the UN Security Council; two (to their immense frustration) do not.

When Mr O’Neill first coined his term, people wondered why Brazil was in the group but not Mexico. Now Russia looks like the odd man out. Its population is falling. Its fertility rate is catastrophically low, at around 1.35, compared with 1.8-2.8 for the others (the fertility rate measures the number of children an average woman can expect to have during her lifetime). The working-age populations of India, China and Brazil will all rise between now and 2030 (enormously in India and Brazil, marginally in China). Russia’s working-age population will fall by 17m. In general, uncertainty about who belongs in the group casts doubt on its coherence. Should South Africa join? Mexico? Indonesia? If they did, what would happen to the group?

A more important obstacle to coherence is strategic rivalry. True, BRIC countries co-operate on a bilateral basis. There have been joint military exercises between Russia and China, Russia and India, and China and India in recent years. Russia and China also have a mutual-security body, called the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which includes Central Asian countries. The big problem, though, is India’s rivalry with China.

China and India fought a war in 1962. China has taken control of a slice of Kashmir which India says was ceded illegally by Pakistan. China also disputes India’s title to the state of Arunachal Pradesh. In 2009 it tried to stop the Asian Development Bank from lending money to India because the loans would have financed a flood-control project there. India has been trying to limit the numbers of skilled Chinese workers. Some Indians fear that China wants to strangle their country with a “string of pearls”: the imagined necklace consists of Pakistan, India’s longtime rival; Nepal, where China backs the Maoist opposition; and Sri Lanka, where it is financing the country’s big post-civil-war reconstruction projects.
(Flash on groups)
The BRICs have also stepped up competition between one another in third countries. Although the flow of aid and investment from rich countries to poor has been faltering, China promised $10 billion of cheap credit to Africa in 2009-12 and Brazil has invested $10 billion in the continent since 2003. The BRICs have also dramatically increased their purchases of exports from poor countries. Rather as America and the Soviet Union vied for influence through economic and military aid, the BRICs do now (though their competition is less fierce than the cold-war version).

Even where BRIC countries agree in general, they often disagree in detail. Climate change is a good example. The emerging giants all argue that Western industrialised nations should take the largest share of the burden of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. They criticise absolute emission caps for developing countries and argue for limits based on population or intensity of use. They all want to keep questions of trade and climate change separate, opposing things like carbon duties.

However, for the purposes of climate change, the BRICs are actually BASICs (Brazil, South Africa, India, China): Russia is an industrialised country under the Kyoto accords, with obligations the others do not have. Even on a specific matter such as forestry, their records differ. Brazil is the world’s biggest deforester, albeit one committed to slowing the pace; China is the world’s biggest afforester (now planting 4m hectares of forest a year)—though some complain that its trading partners’ trees are being felled to stoke its economic growth.

Lastly, the BRICs differ economically. Obviously, their incomes range widely, from Russia’s $15,000 per head per year to India’s $3,000 (these are IMF figures using purchasing-power parities). Brazil and India define themselves as non-aligned developing economies. Russia does not. China sometimes does, and sometimes thinks of itself as sui generis. China and Russia have more open economies, with exports accounting for around a third of GDP. India and Brazil are more closed, with exports less than a fifth of GDP. Perhaps most important, China and Russia are both running huge current-account surpluses; Brazil and India, small current-account deficits. That reflects fundamentally different approaches to economic management. China is suppressing domestic demand and encouraging jobs in export industries. India and Brazil look askance at this form of mercantilism and suffer from China’s resulting currency undervaluation.

Marriages of inconvenience
The BRICs’ divisions do not paralyse the group. The countries got together to propose reforming the IMF, for instance. But they do limit the block’s effectiveness. There is no sign of military co-operation within the organisation, and nothing much on trade. As Mr Spektor puts it, the BRICs merely have to be something, not do anything.

Paradoxically, this makes it easier for the group to flourish since co-operation within the BRICs is in essence free: no one need sacrifice anything, so, however tiny the potential gains, they are worth pursuing. Emerging giants are able to criticise the management of the world economy without having to do anything about it (for example, deploring the failure to complete the Doha round of world trade talks without offering to break the logjam). As Agata Antkiewicz of the Centre for International Governance Innovation puts it, “even though the BRICs group has always been incoherent, the tag seems to have permeated the public domain and become synonymous with change, emerging markets and growth.” But this could end if ever BRIC membership required trade-offs.

Meanwhile, the BRICs face rivals. East Asian countries are cobbling together something that might one day become a coherent emerging-market group. In January a free-trade agreement linking China and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) came into force. In March ASEAN nations, China, Japan and South Korea set up a pool of foreign-exchange reserves giving them a small element of monetary-policy co-ordination. Such a group leaves out Brazil, Russia and India. But Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think-tank in Washington, DC, reckons the West ought to be thinking about how to respond to this regional group, rather than the global club of BRICs.

Eswar Prasad of Cornell University points out that as an organisation (as opposed to a clever acronym), the BRICs are a product of the great recession. They are noticed because of the recessionary debate about rebalancing the world economy. As that debate evolves, so will ideas about the BRICs. But that is no reason for writing them off. There have also been endless numbers of Gs: starting in the 1960s with a G10, then G5, G6, G7, G8 — and now G20.

The BRICs cannot claim legal, historical or geographical coherence, in the way the European Union can. They are not facing a common security threat, as NATO originally did. But events in Copenhagen, messy as they were, are surely proof that new and improbable combinations of large, emerging countries can play a role on the world stage. The BRICs’ begetter, Mr O’Neill, does not regret his creation: his “overriding conclusion is that [they] are a good mechanism for pressing rich countries to change their role in managing the global economy more radically.”

Biblioteca Digital Mundial - www.wdl.org

BIBLIOTECA DIGITAL MUNDIAL UNESCO
site www.wdl.org

Reúne mapas, textos, fotos, gravações e filmes de todos os tempos e explica em sete idiomas as jóias e relíquias culturais de todas as bibliotecas do planeta.

A BDM não oferecerá documentos atuais, apenas aqueles com valor patrimonial, que permitam apreciar e conhecer melhor as culturas do mundo em nos seguintes idiomas: árabe, chinês, inglês, francês, russo, espanhol e português.
Há documentos online em mais de 50 idiomas.
Entre os documentos mais antigos, há alguns manuscritos pré-colombianos, graças a contribuição do México, e os primeiros mapas da América, desenhados por Diego Gutiérrez para o rei da Espanha em 1562,
Os tesouros incluem o Hyrakumanto darani, um documento japonês publicado no ano de 764, considerado o primeiro texto impresso da história; trabalhos de árabes científicos desvendando o mistério da álgebra; ossos utilizados como oráculos e estelas chinesas; a Bíblia de Gutenberg; antigas fotos latino-americanas da Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil e da célebre Bíblia do Diabo, do século XIII, da Biblioteca Nacional da Suécia.
Cada jóia cultura universal aparece acompanhada de uma breve explicação de seu conteúdo e significado. Os documentos foram escaneados e incorporados em seu idioma original, mas as explicações aparecem em sete línguas, entre elas o Português.

A biblioteca começa com 1200 documentos, mas foi desenvolvida para receber um número ilimitado de textos, gravuras, mapas, fotografias e ilustrações.
A BDM permite ao internauta orientar sua busca por épocas, lugares geográficos, tipos de documentos e instituições. Como os documentos foram escaneados em seu idioma original é possível, por exemplo, estudar em detalhe o Evangelho de São Mateus traduzido em aleutiano pelo missionário russo Loann Veniamiov, em 1840.
Com um simples clique, podem-se folhear as páginas de um livro, aproximar e distanciar o texto e movê-lo em todos os sentidos. A excelente qualidade das imagens permite uma leitura cômoda e minuciosa.

Entre as jóias contidas na BDM, está a Declaração da Independência dos Estados Unidos, assim como as Constituições de vários países; o diário de um estudioso de Veneza que acompanhou Fernando de Magalhães em sua viagem ao redor do mundo; o original das Fábulas de La Fontaine, o primeiro livro em espanhol e tagalog, publicado nas Filipinas, a Bíblia de Gutenberg, e umas pinturas rupestres africanas, datadas de 8.000 A.C.

Duas regiões do mundo estão particularmente bem representadas:
America Latina e Oriente Médio: Isso se deve à participação ativa da Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil, da Biblioteca Alexandrina do Egito e da Universidade Rei Abdala da Arábia Saudita.
A estrutura da BDM foi calcada no projeto de digitalização da Biblioteca do Congresso dos Estados Unidos, que começou em 1991 e atualmente contém 11 milhões de documentos online.