Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
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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;
As the chief executive of Barnes & Noble (BKS) from 2010 to 2013, William Lynch might have had one of the most difficult jobs in the retail business. He made it harder still by running a large chain of bookstores as though it were a tech startup. Burning through about a billion dollars, the company built its own e-reading devices, which were well-received, and then its own tablet computers, which weren’t. Barnes & Noble sold so few tablets over the holidays last year that it actually lost money during the one time retailers can count on profits. “We are not going to continue doing what we’re doing,” Lynch said in February.
By then it was too late. In June, Lynch made another grim announcement: The Nook business had an operating loss of $475 million for the fiscal year ended in April, more than it lost in the previous 12 months. Two weeks later he was out of a job. Lynch’s resignation on July 8 was effective immediately. Leonard Riggio, the company’s chairman and largest shareholder, who’d plotted with Lynch to create a digital future for Barnes & Noble, issued a 30-word statement thanking him. Most book blurbs are longer.
With that, the 43-year-old Lynch became the latest casualty in Barnes & Noble’s battle against two of the most creative, disciplined, and well-funded companies around: Amazon.com (AMZN) and Apple(AAPL). He was a victim, too, of his own ambition and enthusiasm. “He is exceptionally smart and optimistic to a fault. He drank too much digital Kool-Aid,” says Michael Norris, a senior analyst at Simba Information. Many people at Barnes & Noble worried about Amazon killing the bookstore; it sometimes seemed as if Lynch wanted to do it himself. He was a Silicon Valley dreamer in charge of a bookstore chain. As he said on Bloomberg TV in late 2012, “I don’t really read physical books that much anymore.”
Barnes & Noble is a $6.8 billion company with 675 carefully selected locations in every state in the country. It also operates 686 college bookstores, which with the e-reader operations make up the company’s Nook Media unit. Sales at its regular stores declined almost 6 percent in the company’s 2013 fiscal year, to $4.6 billion. But because their margins are getting higher and their expenses lower, the bookstores still make money: Ninety-five percent are profitable. Lynch may not have been reading real books, but Barnes & Noble’s customers still do.
The company hasn’t announced its plans yet, but it will probably sell the e-reader business or shut it down. Barnes & Noble’s Nook misadventure may look like one of those inexplicable unforced errors businesses make from time to time, like New Coke or the Edsel. But it’s hard to blame Lynch for trying to transform the company. The digital revolution is changing the dynamics of the business. The company had to respond, and it still does. The problem was that Lynch tried to transform the wrong thing.
Barnes & Noble has a history of ill-timed technological decisions. In the 1990s it was focused on beating Borders and didn’t set up its website until 1997, a full two years after Amazon.com went live. It introduced a primitive e-reader too early, in 2001 (on Sept. 11, to make things worse). After Amazon introduced the Kindle in 2007, Barnes & Noble needed someone to take control of its destiny and hired Lynch to do just that.
Lynch, who grew up in Houston, always had some Texas swagger. He had an MBA from the Columbia School of Business and a background in marketing. In 2000 he was the general manager of e-commerce at Palm, the now-defunct smartphone manufacturer; he co-founded Gifts.com four years later; then he did a quick turn at HSN’s (HSNI) website. Lynch had a real sense of grandeur about his role there and his future beyond it, says a former colleague who asked to remain anonymous. No one expected him to stay long. (Lynch did not respond to requests to comment for this article. Riggio also declined to comment.)
When Lynch joined Barnes & Noble as head of its online business in early 2009, the Nook project was already under way. Back then it was code-named Bravo. Company executives had also brought on Robert Brunner, an industrial designer who’d worked at Apple and helped create the Amazon Kindle. They hired software engineers and hardware designers and set them up in a former bakery in downtown Palo Alto.
In October 2009, Lynch introduced the e-reader. “This is Nook,” he said from the stage at Pier 60 in Manhattan as he held up the device. The e-reader’s welcome screen featured an introduction by humorist Dave Barry: “Congratulations on your new Nook! We’re sure it will give you many years of trouble-free enjoyment until next week, when we come out with a newer version.”
The Nook looked good, worked well, and sold better than Barnes & Noble expected. “There was certainly a period when Nook was a real device leader,” says Mike Shatzkin, head of Idea Logical, a consulting firm. “But it was brief.” Three months after Lynch introduced the Nook to an audience for the first time, Steve Jobs held up the iPad.
Lynch was appointed chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble in March 2010, replacing Steve Riggio, Len’s younger brother. The decision was a reward to Lynch and a pledge to speed up the transformation of the bookseller. It was also a way to placate Ron Burkle and other investors who, accusing the Riggios of running the company as if they owned it, had threatened a hostile takeover. “Our stores are very much the piazzas [we] always imagined in the past,” Len Riggio said when announcing the changes. “Now we want to be equally committed to the other parts of our business.”
The early success of the Nook emboldened Lynch, and he made the biggest, most expensive decision of his career: to compete with the iPad. Riggio wholeheartedly bought into the idea. He turned over more of the stores’ profits to Lynch and more of the stores’ space to the Nook. “We will try to create the same type of excitement one sees in the Apple stores,” Riggio said in the summer of 2010. Lynch called the in-store Nook displays the “shrine” in a New York magazine interview. Most customers bought their Nooks at those shrines, though Walmart(WMT), Target (TGT), and Best Buy(BBY) also carried them.
Lynch unveiled his first tablet computer, the Nook Color, in October of that year. “We’re playing offense with this device,” he said on Bloomberg TV. The device was smaller, lighter, and less expensive than the iPad. It was also less powerful and less entertaining—no app store, no camera. Nor did Barnes & Noble have the partners, suppliers, financial resources, or expertise of Apple or Amazon.
When Riggio helped introduce another version of the tablet in the spring of 2011, he said, “We’re all in, in terms of effort and a huge investment in capital and people.” Asked about the competition, he replied: “It may seem daunting to you, but not to me. It would be like saying to a retailer, how can you compete with Wal-Mart? Or to a media company, how can you compete with Google (GOOG)?”
By 2011, Barnes & Noble had won about 25 percent of the then $2 billion e-book market. Lynch was spending several days every other week in Silicon Valley, where he built up an operation of 300 highly paid engineers and designers. “The company became kind of schizophrenic,” says Jack Perry, who runs the publishing consulting firm 38Enso and who has been watching the bookseller closely. “The people in New York didn’t know what was going on in Silicon Valley, and the people in Silicon Valley didn’t care what was going on in New York.”
Lynch, as head of the entire company, was nevertheless one of the Silicon Valley people. He’d never worked in traditional retailing and didn’t pay enough attention to how he could use the bookstores to enhance his digital strategy—and vice versa. “He did not create actual reasons for Nook consumers to visit Barnes & Noble stores,” says Simba Information’s Norris. “When people go digital, they don’t go cold turkey. They still buy print.”
As Lynch pushed his Silicon Valley group to develop multimedia features, some there thought these efforts were misguided. Two former employees, who left the company recently and declined to be named because they didn’t want to speak publicly about a former employer, described them as an unwelcome distraction. One of the former employees cites the Nook’s family profiles feature, which allows different users to maintain separate media libraries on a single device. Lynch bragged about it, competitors quickly copied it—and Nook’s advantage was lost. Another big distraction, one says, emerged after Microsoft (MSFT) invested $300 million in 2012 in what became known as Nook Media. Part of the deal required the engineers to create an app for the new Windows 8.
Lynch became less willing to countenance disagreements, which squelched creativity and pushed people to leave, according to the former employees. Brunner, the industrial designer, still works as a consultant to Nook Media and thinks highly of Lynch. He describes the former CEO as decisive, saying, “He would listen, but he was one of those leaders who viewed his job as making decisions. It was not a consensus approach. But it wasn’t Jobs’s maniacal autocracy either.”
As the holiday shopping season of 2012 drew near, and Lynch was talking up his two new tablets and their multimedia capabilities, Apple introduced the iPad mini. Amazon released an updated Kindle Fire, and Google unveiled a 7-inch tablet. In a testament to just how persuasive Lynch could be, on Dec. 28 the publishing company Pearson (PSO) announced an investment of $89.5 million in Nook Media, giving it a 5 percent stake in a business that was about to post an operating loss of $156 million in one quarter. It could have been worse: At least the other part of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble’s college bookstores, was profitable. Pearson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Then Riggio made an announcement of his own. He expressed interest in buying the retail division, and not, pointedly, Nook Media. Three days later, on Feb. 28, everyone knew one reason: Barnes & Noble had actually lost $6 million over the three winter months because Nook sales had dropped 26 percent from the year before. “The larger technology brands have more resonance in that multifunction tablet market than we do,” said Lynch. “And so, we obviously have to adjust and change.”
What followed was four months of mixed signals. In early March, Lynch signed a two-year contract that seemed to deny reality. It gave Barnes & Noble the right to make him the head of Nook Media should it be split from the retail business, and it entitled him to a $1.5 million retention bonus. The contract also stated that he’d received $1.8 million for attracting Microsoft and Pearson as investors. In May, Lynch found an ally in Google. He struck a deal to install the Google Play app store, Gmail, and the Chrome Web browser on new devices. Although the Nook was built with Google’s Android operating system, users hadn’t been able to access any Google apps. Lynch said Nook was now one of the most “versatile” tablets in the market.
Barnes & Noble presented its financial results for fiscal 2013 six weeks later. Overall sales declined 4.1 percent, to $6.8 billion, and it lost $155 million. The traditional bookstore business had a profit of $374 million, a 16 percent increase from the previous fiscal year, even though sales declined 5.9 percent, to $4.6 billion. And of course there was the Nook business’s operating loss of $475 million on sales of $776.2 million.
If Nook Media had really been a tech company, maybe executives and investors could have tolerated those losses. But it isn’t. It’s an expensive accessory for a shrinking bookstore chain. Now it was time to “de-risk the Nook business plan,” Lynch said, by partnering with a device manufacturer on future tablets. He didn’t have any partners to name, however.
And then he was gone. “It wasn’t a power struggle between William Lynch and Len Riggio. It was an economic decision,” says David Strasser, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott. “Lynch was willing to stomach greater losses for a greater period of time. That’s the tech mentality, but that’s not the way Len Riggio does business.”
Riggio hasn’t named a new CEO, nor has he elaborated on his plans to buy the bookstores and website. No one at the company has commented on whether Lynch’s departure might hasten a sale of Nook Media. But Riggio did put the company’s chief financial officer, Michael Huseby, a man with experience spinning off divisions, in charge of Nook Media. Microsoft owns a 17 percent stake after its initial investment and the promise of an additional $305 million over the next five years. In May, TechCrunch reported that the software company was considering a $1 billion bid for Nook Media. Microsoft declined to comment.
“Barnes & Noble cannot ultimately escape the fate of Blockbuster and Virgin [Megastore]. But they have to make the slide into oblivion more gradual,” says Idea Logical’s Shatzkin. “Does Barnes & Noble have 3 years or 10 years? I don’t know. But it doesn’t have 20 years, that’s for sure. They have to manage their disappearance or turn into something completely different.”
Barnes & Noble may be keeping quiet about its plans, but plenty of others have suggestions. “Their business should be selling content,” says Rick Schottenfeld, an investor who’s been critical of how much the company spent on the Nook. “If they’re going to sell e-readers, they should be commoditized, not cutting-edge. Barnes & Noble should give them away: Buy one for $50 and get a $50 credit.” The company could place electronic codes on books so people can swipe and buy the digital version in stores or friends’ homes, says Norris. Peter Olson, the former chief executive of Random House, suggests that when a Nook user buys a print book as a gift, the digital version could be half-price. “Maybe Amazon should take over the top locations as showrooms,” he says.
The company Lynch leaves behind is perhaps wiser and certainly poorer. The bookselling industry is still in flux, sometimes defying expectations. E-book sales make up about 20 percent of the total $15 billion market. Most people assumed e-books would quickly overtake physical books. Last year, though, their gains slowed. Sales rose 44 percent, but they had more than doubled the previous year, according to the Association of American Publishers. People still prefer to read serious books, and kids’ books, too, in print.
There’s been another unanticipated shift: When people buy tablets they don’t necessarily use them to read. Simba reports that half of iPad owners and 25 percent of Kindle Fire owners didn’t read a single e-book last year. “E-books sound really cool if you’re a publisher in a room with smart tech people,” Norris says. “Everyone just assumed that when people had tablets, they’ll become readers. That’s nonsense.”
Whatever Riggio decides to do with the business he built, he could do worse than remember why people still go to his stores. People enjoy being around books, holding them, turning their pages. As Barnes & Noble’s new head of Nook Media says, richer minds, richer pockets.With Matt Townsend
On Gay Priests, Pope Francis Asks, ‘Who Am I to Judge?’
By RACHEL DONADIO The New York Times, 30/07/2013 — For generations, homosexuality has largely been a taboo topic for the Vatican, ignored altogether or treated as “an intrinsic moral evil,” in the words of the previous pope. In that context, brief remarks by Pope Francis suggesting that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation, made aboard the papal airplane on the way back from his first foreign trip, to Brazil, resonated through the church. Never veering from church doctrine opposing homosexuality, Francis did strike a more compassionate tone than that of his predecessors, some of whom had largely avoided even saying the more colloquial “gay.” “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using the English word “gay.” Francis’s words could not have been more different from those of Benedict XVI, who in 2005 wrote that homosexuality was “a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil,” and an “objective disorder.” The church document said men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not become priests. Vatican experts were quick to point out that Francis was not suggesting that the priests or anyone else should act on their homosexual tendencies, which the church considers a sin. But the fact that he made such comments — and used the word “gay” — was nevertheless revolutionary, and likely to generate significant discussion in local dioceses, where bishops are divided over whether to accept priests who are gay but celibate. “It’s not a great opening in terms of contents, but the fact that he talked about it that way is a great novelty,” said Paolo Rodari, a Vatican expert at the Italian daily La Repubblica. Francis would probably agree with Benedict’s writings on homosexuality, he added, “but it doesn’t interest him.” “It interests him to say that the problem in the end isn’t if someone has this tendency, the important thing is to live in the light of God,” Mr. Rodari said. “Said by a pope, it’s enormous.” Francis also told reporters that while Pope John Paul II had definitively closed the door to female priests, he sought a “theology of women” and a greater role for them in Catholic life, news reports said. The pope’s comments on homosexuals and women in the church were yet another sign of the different directions from which Benedict and Francis approach doctrine. While Benedict, the shy theologian, focused more on ethics and advocated a purer church, even if it might end up being smaller, Francis was elected for his belief that the Catholic Church must engage in dialogue with the world — even with those it disagrees with — if it wants to stay vibrant and relevant. “At a certain point, tone becomes substance if it’s seen as revitalizing the prospects of the church,” said John L. Allen, Jr., a Vatican expert at The National Catholic Reporter. In Benedict’s more subdued 2007 visit to Brazil, where Evangelical churches are making rapid inroads in the Catholic majority, he delivered speeches to bishops about how to respond to postmodern society. In contrast, Francis spoke on the beach, engaged with the masses and was greeted like a rock star by followers entranced by his approachable style and homespun folksy adages. (“You can always add more water to the beans,” he said at one point.) More than a million people gathered for an open-air Mass on Copacabana Beach on Sunday. At one event, bishops danced on stage to upbeat music. The spectacle was clearly aimed at competing with Evangelical churches that have a more “pop” style. “We can see the figure of Peter so near to us,” said Milena Rocha, 20, a Brazilian student who slept on the beach Saturday night along with thousands of others in a vigil before the pope’s final Mass on Sunday, comparing Francis to St. Peter. She said that the vigil, in which many camped on the sands on pieces of cardboard, showed the energy that Francis was bringing to the church in Brazil, which has more Catholics than any other country, an estimated 123 million. Despite missteps by organizers, including one that compromised security, the visit unfolded peacefully, giving many people a chance to glimpse or even embrace Francis. “This pope keeps renewing the church,” said Claudia Brandão, 30, a housewife who traveled from Angola with her 9-month-old daughter. In 2007, “Benedict came and played the standard classical nocturne that he was famous for, and his devotees loved it. Francis came and played the guitar in his very accessible style and the crowds went wild,” said Mr. Allen, who traveled to Brazil for both trips. Before he resigned in February, Benedict’s papacy had been marked by scandals — a sexual abuse scandal, aleaks scandal and trouble with the secretive Vatican Bank. Francis, with his style of radical simplicity and his direct manner, has shifted things. “He’s completely changed the narrative about the church,” Mr. Allen said. “In five months, now the dominant Catholic story is ‘Charismatic Pope Takes World by Storm.’ ” During his papal trips, John Paul II loved to walk to the back of the plane and chat with reporters, while Benedict only responded to a handful of preselected questions. Francis, on the overnight flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro, spoke freely to reporters for 80 minutes about everything from the Vatican Bank troubles to his decision not to live in the Apostolic Palace but rather in a Vatican residence. Francis did not dodge a single question, even thanking the person who prompted his comments on homosexuality, asking about Italian news reports of a “gay lobby” inside the Vatican, with clerics blackmailing one another with information about sexual missteps. “So much is written about the gay lobby. I have yet to find on a Vatican identity card the word ‘gay,’ ” Francis said, chuckling. “They say there are some gay people here. I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good.” An article in the Italian weekly L’Espresso this month alleged that one of the advisers that Francis had appointed to look into the Vatican Bank, Msgr. Battista Ricca, had been accused of having gay trysts when he was a Vatican diplomat in Uruguay. The pope told reporters that nothing in the documentation he had seen substantiated the reports. He added that such a lobby would be an issue, but that he did not have anything against gay people and that their sins should be forgiven like those of all Catholics. Francis said that homosexuals should be treated with dignity, and that no one should be subjected to blackmail or pressure because of sexual orientation. “The problem isn’t having this orientation. The problem is making a lobby,” he said. In recent years, both Benedict and Francis have tried to make changes at the Vatican Bank so that it meets international anti-money-laundering norms that are a condition for using the euro. Asked about the bank, Francis said, “Some say that it’s better to have a bank, others that it would be better to have a fund, still others say to close it.” Asked what was in the black briefcase that he was seen carrying onto the plane by himself en route to Brazil, Francis said he had a razor, a breviary and a book about St. Teresa. “It’s normal to carry a bag,” he said, according to news reports. “I’m a bit surprised that the image of the bag made its way around the world. Anyway, it wasn’t the suitcase with the codes for the nuclear bomb.”
Correction: July 29, 2013
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect date for Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to Brazil. His visit to Latin America, including Brazil, was in 2007, not 2006.
Simon Romero and Taylor Barnes contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.
Trecho de entrevista concedida por Joaquim Barbosa, ministro-presidente do STF, a Miriam Leitão, Globo, 28/07/2013:
O senhor foi discriminado no Itamaraty?
Discriminado eu sempre fui em todos os trabalhos, do momento em que comecei a galgar escalões. Nunca dei bola. Aprendi a conviver com isso e superar. O Itamaraty é uma das instituições mais discriminatórias do Brasil.
O senhor não passou no concurso?
Passei nas provas escritas, fui eliminado numa entrevista, algo que existia para eliminar indesejados. Sim, fui discriminado, mas me prestaram um favor. Todos os diplomatas gostariam de estar na posição que eu estou. Todos.
Itamaraty rebate Barbosa e cita programa de bolsas que beneficia afrodescendentes
‘Folha de S.Paulo’ e‘O Estado de S.Paulo’ também responderam ao ministro
RIO - O Ministério das Relações Exteriores, procurado pelo GLOBO, disse que não comentaria as declarações do presidente do Supremo Tribunal Federal, Joaquim Barbosa. Em nota, o órgão classificou as acusações de discriminação “a título pessoal”.
Recorda-se, por oportuno, que o Itamaraty mantém programa de ação afirmativa — a Bolsa Prêmio Vocação Para a Diplomacia —, instituída com a finalidade de proporcionar maior igualdade de oportunidades de acesso à carreira de diplomata e de acentuar a diversidade nos quadros da diplomacia brasileira. Lançado em 2002, o programa já concedeu 526 bolsas para 319 bolsistas afrodescendentes. Dezenove ex-bolsistas foram aprovados no “ Concurso de Admissão à Carreira de Diplomata e integrados ao Serviço Exterior Brasileiro. As bolsas concedidas têm atualmente o valor anual de R$ 25.000,00 e devem ser utilizadas na compra de materiais de estudo e no pagamento de cursos preparatórios. Esse programa tem melhorado, de forma concreta e decisiva, as possibilidades de ingresso na carreira diplomática por candidatos afrodescendentes”, diz a nota do ministério.
"Ademais, desde 2011, o Ministério das Relações Exteriores adotou reserva de 10% das vagas na primeira fase do Concurso de Admissão à Carreira de Diplomata, com vistas a promover o acesso de candidatos afrodescendentes ao Serviço Exterior Brasileiro”, acrescenta o órgão.
Já a direção do jornal “Folha de S.Paulo”, que para Barbosa atua de maneira intolerante, afirma em nota que “o presidente do STF não desmente nem corrige nenhuma das informações publicadas pela ‘Folha de S.Paulo’, que as reafirma. O ministro Joaquim Barbosa ainda não está acostumado ao cargo, que o expõe ao escrutínio público e reduz sua privacidade.”
Sobre o episódio em que Barbosa sugere a um jornalista de “O Estado de S.Paulo” que chafurdasse no lixo, o jornal, em nota, informou que “a manifestação atual do presidente do STF parece mostrar que seu pedido de desculpas, à época do episódio, foi no mínimo insincero.”
Ainda de acordo com o jornal paulista, “segundo nota oficial emitida pelo Supremo, o ministro Joaquim Barbosa reafirmava “sua crença no importante papel desempenhado pela imprensa em uma democracia” e “seu apego à liberdade de opinião”.
Al final, la quita de los depósitos no garantizados —los que superan los 100.000 euros— del Bank of Cyprus por el rescate financiero al país será del 47,5%, según el acuerdo que han alcanzado el Gobierno chipriota y la troika de acreedores formada por Banco Central Europeo, Comisión Europea y Fondo Monetario Internacional. "La tasa es significativamente inferior a la previsión original de hace cuatro meses" ha señalado el viceportavoz del Ejecutivo de Nicosia, Víctor Papadópulos al dar a conocer la noticia. "Este es un desarrollo positivo para la economía del país y los depositantes afectados", ha apuntado. En su decreto de marzo, el Banco Central había establecido, en una primera fase, una quita del 37,5% para los depósitos del Bank of Cyprus—la mayor entidad del país— que superaran la cantidad de 100.000 euros. Ese porcentaje ya ha sido transformado en acciones del banco. Al mismo tiempo 22,5% de los depósitos no garantizados había sido bloqueado, a la espera de una valoración definitiva sobre cuál sería el monto final necesario para garantizar la solvencia. Esta medida provisional elevaba el riesgo de la quita, que se ha quedado en el 47,5%, hasta al 60%. Con esta decisión, según Papadópulos, se da un paso importante para que el Bank of Cyprus pueda abandonar el estatus de reestructuración y para que la nueva directiva pueda empezar a funcionar con normalidad. Al abandonar el estatus de "reestructuración" se sientan las bases para una normalización paulatina del sistema bancario chipriota, sometido a estrictos controles del movimiento de capitales desde marzo pasado. La decisión sobre la cuantía de la quita llega después de que la troika y las autoridades chipriotas analizaran el informe de la auditoría KPMG de Londres sobre los activos del banco. Los acreedores, que iniciaron el pasado día 17 su primera misión de evaluación del programa de ajuste chipriota, analizaron también las cuentas de Banco Popular (Laiki). Los activos de esta entidad quedaron divididos en un banco malo y otro bueno —este últimos integrados en el Bank of Cyprus— tras decidirse su liquidación en marzo. Además de los depósitos garantizados —los inferiores a 100.000 euros—, los créditos y otros activos de buena calidad, el Banco de Chipre asumió la deuda los 9.000 millones de euros que Laiki tenía a través del mecanismo de Financiación de Emergencia. La directora de la Comisión del Mercado de Valores de Chipre, Dimitra Kaloyiru, ha afirmado recientemente que espera que el Bank of Cyprus pueda volver a cotizar en Bolsa en octubre, tras quedar en suspenso su cotización en abril pasado, al estallar la crisis bancaria.
FMI avalia pedido do Brasil para mudar cálculo da dívida
Na última quinta-feira, o ministro Guido Mantega encaminhou carta do Fundo solicitando mudança no cálculo da dívida bruta do país
Veja.com, 29/07/2013
Divergência: Para o FMI, a dívida bruta do Brasil fechou 2012 em 68% do PIB. Pela metodologia do BC, ficou em 59% do PIB. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)
O Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI) vai analisar o pedido do Brasil para que mude a forma como calcula a dívida do governo, disse um porta-voz do Fundo. "O FMI vai responder ao ministro (da Fazenda, Guido Mantega) no devido tempo, após analisar a questão", destacou.
Segundo o porta-voz, até lá, o FMI não fará comentários sobre o pedido feito por Mantega à diretora-gerente do Fundo, Christine Lagarde.
Como adiantou a coluna Radar, de VEJA, no sábado, Mantega encaminhou um pedido ao órgão para que seja revista a fórmula de cálculo da dívida. O ministro pede uma mudança na metodologia para o cálculo da dívida bruta brasileira, que é a soma de todos os débitos do governo federal, estados, municípios e estatais.
Desde o ano passado, o Brasil tem o pior desempenho neste item entre os principais países emergentes. Segundo o FMI, a dívida bruta do Brasil fechou 2012 em 68% do PIB. Pela metodologia do BC, ficou em 59% do PIB.
Dia 12 de Setembro já tenho uma palestra em Yale. Depois Harvard e Brown. Acho que vou me divertir por aqui.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Hartford, CT, New England
Stanford é a melhor universidade americana em ranking da 'Forbes'. Confira top 10
Princeton fica em 3º; Harvard, em 8º. Foram avaliadas 650 instituições
Veja.com, 29/07/2013
Corredores da Universidade Stanford, eleita a melhor universidade dos Estados Unidos pela 'Forbes' (Divulgação)
A revista americana Forbes publicou no fim da semana passada uma lista com as cem melhores universidades dos Estados Unidos de 2013, feita em parceira com o Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), núcleo independente de pesquisas voltado ao ensino superior. Pela primeira vez em seis edições do America’s Top Colleges, como é conhecido o levantamento, as duas primeiras posições foram ocupadas por instituições da Califórnia: Stanford e Pomona, respectivamente. A Universidade Princeton aparece em terceiro, enquanto Harvard, que figurou no 6º lugar em 2012, caiu para 8º. Foram avaliadas 650 universidades (confira a lista com as dez primeiras colocadas).
Além de ter duas escolas no top 3 do ranking, a Costa Oeste americana também se saiu melhor no quesito educação pública. A Universidade da Califórnia, em Berkeley, foi considerada a melhor instituição estadual de ensino superior, ocupando a 22ª posição da lista.
Os organizadores do prêmio destacaram ainda o bom desempenho da chamada Ivy League – grupo que reúne as universidades privadas Harvard, Pensilvânia, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Brown, Cornell e Darthmouth, todas localizadas no Nordeste dos Estados Unidos. Apesar de não liderar o ranking, o grupo ficou dentro do top 20, com Princeton, Yale e Columbia em 3º, 4º e 5º lugares, respectivamente. Cornell foi a que apresentou o melhor salto: da 51ª posição, em 2012, para a 19ª, em 2013.
Para construir o ranking, Forbes e CCAP analisam fatores como taxa de satisfação dos estudantes com as aulas, inserção no mercado de trabalho após a graduação, dívida adquirida para pagar mensalidades, prêmios conquistados pelos estudantes das faculdades e porcentagem de alunos no prazo estipulado pelo curso.
1º lugar - Universidade Stanford, Stanford, Califórnia
Instalada em pleno Vale do Silício, a Universidade Stanford, fundada em 1891, é conhecida pelo desenvolvimento de tecnologia de ponta e pela formação dos mais poderosos CEOs da indústria tecnológica – caso de Larry Page, atual presidente do Google. A instituição acumula o mais famoso curso de ciência da computação dos Estados Unidos e um dos principais centros de pesquisa do mundo.
Stanford é também sinônimo de excelência em ciências humanas, sociais e naturais, com renomados cursos de direito e medicina, além do maior laboratório de pesquisa de células-tronco já construído. São sete faculdades, 16.000 estudantes e 19 prêmios Nobel laureados a alunos, ex-alunos e docentes.
Stanford foi considerada a segunda melhor universidade do mundo pelo ranking 2012-2013 da revista Times Higher Education (THE), atrás apenas do Instituto de Tecnologia da Califórnia e empatada com a Universidade Oxford, na Grã-Bretanha.
Mais de 60% das cidades têm baixo índice de desenvolvimento em educação
Apenas cinco cidades obtiveram notas "muito altas". Ciclo final é o maior gargalo
Veja.com, 29/07/2013
Educação puxa desempenho do país no IDHM para baixo (Eduardo Martino/Documentography)
Mais de 60% dos 5.566 municípios brasileiros apresentam índices de desenvolvimento em educação considerados 'baixo' ou 'muito baixo', de acordo com dados do Atlas do Desenvolvimento Humano no Brasil 2013, divulgado nesta segunda-feira pelo Programa das Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento (Pnud). Na outra ponta, apenas cinco cidades são enquadradas com desempenho educacional 'muito alto'.
O Índice de Desenvolvimento Humano Municipal (IDHM) é calculado com base em três indicadores: renda, educação e longevidade. Educação foi o que apresentou o pior desempenho, com taxa média de 0,637. Renda e longevidade alcançaram, respectivamente, índices de 0,739 ('alto') e 0,816 ('muito alto'). A pontuação geral do Brasil foi de 0,727 (dentro da faixa considerado 'alta').
O IDHM é dividido em cinco faixas: de zero a 0,499 ('muito baixa'); de 0,500 a 0,599 ('baixa'); de 0,600 a 0,699 ('média'); de 0,700 a 0,799 ('alta') e, por fim, de 800 até um ('muito alta').
Para compor o IDHM de educação, a Pnud considera o nível de escolaridade da população adulta e o fluxo escolar da população jovem, ou seja, o porcentual de estudantes que estão na série adequada à sua faixa etária.
Com 0,207 ponto, o município de Melgaço, no Pará, obteve o pior índice. Na cidade, apenas 58,7% das crianças de 5 e 6 anos estão matriculas na escola. Nos anos finais da escolarização básica, a situação é ainda pior: menos de 6% dos jovens de 18 a 20 anos concluíram o ensino médio.
O município, no entanto, não é um caso isolado: mais de uma em cada quatro cidades do país têm pontuação 'muito baixa'. Outras 36,1% estão na faixa tida como 'baixa'.
Os cinco destaques do ranking, com desempenho superior a 800, foram os municípios de Águas de São Pedro (SP), São Caetano do Sul e Santos (SP), Vitória e Florianópolis.
Menos pior — Apesar de ser o componente com o pior desempenho do IDHM, a educação foi o que registrou o maior avanço nos últimos vinte anos. O índice saiu de um patamar de 0,279, em 1991, para 0,637, em 2010, um crescimento de 128%.
Em 20 anos, houve evolução da proporção de adultos com ensino fundamental concluído, de 30,1% para 54,9%. A porcentagem de crianças de 5 a 6 anos na escola, por sua vez, saltou de 37,3% para 91,1%. A quantidade de jovens de 11 a 13 anos nas séries finais do ensino fundamental alcançou 84,9% — era de 36,8% em 1991.
O maior gargalo continua no ciclo final da educação básica: a porcentagem de jovens de 18 a 20 anos com ensino médio completo passou de 13%, em 1991, para 41%.
Pois é, depois dizem que a soberania consiste em não tirar os sapatos.
Uma nota esquecida de setembro de 2011, sobre a primeira viagem deslumbrante:
quinta-feira, 22 de setembro de 2011
MINISTROS BARRADOS NO BAILE
Anos atrás, quando o chanceler Celso Lafer teve de tirar os sapatos ao chegar a Nova York segundo instruções da segurança norte-americana, foi um auê danado na imprensa, com críticas severas ao chanceler. Já o chanceler Amorim, desembarcava num aeroporto militar em Nova Jersey para não ter de fazer o mesmo. Pois, agora, ministros do atual governo, quando quiseram entrar no hotel Waldorf Astoria, onde os presidentes Dilma e Osama estavam hospedados, foram barrados e submetidos a detectores de metais. E ninguém reclamou...
A frase da semana não é exatamente da semana, mas sim de outubro de 2011, de um jornalista infelizmente falecido:
"No "país dos impostos", os remédios para nós, seres humanos, são taxados em mais que o dobro dos produtos de uso veterinário: se você entrar na farmácia tossindo, paga 34% de imposto; se entrar latindo,paga só 14%."
2013 WORLD TRADE REPORT WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO) 18 JULY 2013
FAST-CHANGING NATURE OF WORLD TRADE POSES NEW POLICY CHALLENGES, REPORT SAYS.
The future of world trade, and the global trading system, will be shaped by a range of economic, political and social factors, including technological innovation, shifts in production and consumption patterns, and demographic change, according to the 2013 World Trade Report published by the WTO on 18 July 2013. Director-General Pascal Lamy said: “One element clearly stands out in the Report, and that is the importance of trade for development”. “The transformation of trade has been underway for some time,” said WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy. “It is manifested most clearly in wider geographical participation in trade and the rise of international supply chain production. One element clearly stands out in the Report, and that is the importance of trade for development. The forecasts and reflections contained in this report do not foresee a reverse of globalization. But we should remember that the gains it brings could be nullified or at least mitigated if short-term pressures are allowed to override long-term interests, and if its social consequences in terms of the unevenness of its benefits are neglected. This is why renewed efforts are needed to revive the vibrancy of the global trading system.” One of the most significant drivers of change is technology. Not only have revolutions in transport and communications transformed our world but new developments, such as 3D printing, and the continuing spread of information technology will continue to do so. Trade and foreign direct investment, together with a greater geographical spread of income growth and opportunity, will integrate a growing number of countries into more extensive international exchange. Higher incomes and larger populations will put new strains on both renewable and non-renewable resources, generating even greater need for careful resource management. More effort must also be devoted to addressing environmental issues, the report says. Economic and political institutions will continue to have a significant role to play in shaping international co-operation, including in trade, as will the interplay of cultural customs among countries. Non-tariff measures will gain in prominence and regulatory convergence will likely constitute the greatest challenge to the trading system of the future. The future of trade will also be affected by the extent to which politics and policies successfully address issues of growing social concern, such as the availability of jobs and persistent income inequality, as well as environmental concerns, say the authors of the World Trade Report 2013.
Main points of the Report:
TRENDS IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE
•Dramatic decreases in transport and communication costs have been the driving forces behind today’s global trading system. Geopolitics has also played a decisive role in advancing and reinforcing these structural trends.
•In the last 30 years, trade in merchandise and commercial services have increased by about 7 per cent per year on average, reaching a peak of $18 trillion and $4 trillion respectively in 2011. When trade is measured in value-added terms, services play a larger role.
•Between 1980 and 2011, developing economies raised their share in world exports from 34 per cent to 47 per cent and their share in world imports from 29 per cent to 42 per cent. Asia is playing an increasing role in world trade.
•For a number of decades, world trade has grown on average nearly twice as fast as world production. This reflects the increasing prominence of international supply chains and hence the importance of measuring trade in value-added terms.
•Simulations show that in a dynamic economic and open trade environment, developing countries are likely to outpace developed countries in terms of both export and GDP growth by a factor of two to three in future decades. By contrast, their GDP would grow by less than half this rate in a pessimistic economic and protectionist scenario, and export growth would be lower than in developed countries.
FUNDAMENTAL ECONOMIC FACTORS AFFECTING INTERNATIONAL TRADE
•Demographic change affects trade through its impact on countries’ comparative advantage and on import demand. An ageing population, migration, educational improvements and women’s participation in the labour force will all play a role in years to come, as will the continuing emergence of a global middle class.
•Investment in physical infrastructure can facilitate the integration of new players into international supply chains. The accumulation of capital and the build-up of knowledge and technology associated with investment, particularly foreign direct investment, can also enable countries to move up the value chain by altering their comparative advantage.
•New players have emerged among the countries driving technological progress. Countries representing 20 per cent of the world’s total population accounted for about 70 per cent of research and development (R&D) expenditure in 1999, but only about 40 per cent in 2010. Technology spill-overs are largely regional and stronger among countries connected by production networks. In addition to the traditionally R&D intensive manufacturing sectors, knowledge-intensive business services are emerging as key drivers of knowledge accumulation.
•The shale gas revolution portends dramatic shifts in the future pattern of energy production and trade as North America becomes energy sufficient. Increasing water scarcity in the future in large swathes of the developing world may mean that the long-term decline in the share of food and agricultural products in international trade might be arrested or even reversed.
•Ample opportunities exist for policy actions, at the national and multilateral level, to reduce transportation costs and offset the effect of higher fuel costs in the future – improving the quantity and quality of transportation infrastructure, successfully concluding the Doha Round negotiations on trade facilitation, introducing more competition on transport routes, and supporting innovation.
•Improvements in institutional quality, notably in relation to contract enforcement, can reduce the costs of trade. Institutions are also a source of comparative advantage, and trade and institutions strongly influence each other.
TRADE OPENNESS AND THE BROADER SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT
•Successful integration into global markets requires the constant need for individuals and societies to cope with changes in the competitive environment. These adjustments can put labour markets under strain and can shape attitudes towards trade openness. Job losses in the short-run can exert pressure on governments to use barriers to trade. In the end, it is open economies with a well-trained workforce and a business-friendly environment as well as an effective social protection system that tend to be better placed to adjust successfully.
•Societies’ transition to a sustainable development path requires careful management of the multi-faceted relationship between trade and the environment in order to maximize the environmental benefits that open trade can bring. Competitiveness concerns may result in governments incorporating trade-restrictive non-tariff measures into environmental policies as a means of compensating affected firms and sectors. Such green incentive packages may undermine their environmental effectiveness and exacerbate their potentially adverse trade effects.
•The expansion of trade needs to be supported by a stable financial and monetary system – delivering a sufficient volume of trade finance at an affordable cost, particularly for developing countries, and macroeconomic policies that promote exchange rate stability.
PROSPECTS FOR MULTILATERAL TRADE CO-OPERATION
•Some of the main trends which will affect world trade in the coming decades are the emergence of international value chains, the rise of new forms of regionalism, the growth of trade in services, the greater incidence of non-tariff measures, higher and more volatile commodity prices, the rise of emerging economies, and evolving perceptions about the link between trade, jobs and the environment.
•These trends will raise a number of challenges for the WTO. Trade opening, especially in the context of non-tariff measures beyond WTO disciplines, is taking place outside of the WTO. A greater focus on regulatory convergence will therefore be required. Interdependence between trade in goods and trade in services is increasing. Frictions in natural resource markets expose some regulatory gaps. The emergence of new players affects global trade governance in ways that need to be better understood. Coherence between WTO rules and non-trade regulations in other multilateral fora needs to be maintained.
•Addressing these challenges will involve reviewing and possibly expanding the WTO agenda. Traditional market access issues will not disappear but new issues, particularly with regard to non-tariff measures, are emerging. Internal governance matters as well as the role of the WTO in global governance may need to be addressed. An important issue will be how to “multilateralize” the gains made in preferential trade agreements and to secure regulatory convergence.
