I wrote before on my fears of the food crisis ahead. Now that the IMF woke up, the news is allover. Even Belgian vegetables are becoming increasingly expensive. But that's nothing compared to the upcoming surge of rice prices of 30%. Today the news announced that Egypt is stopping export of its rice. But Egypt is a tiny producer of rice, with onlt 3800 '000 metric tonnes.
Do you know which country is the biggest non-Asian producer of rice? Guess. Yes, it's Brazil. With 7800 '000 metric tonnes, it's bigger than the US (5.900 '000 metric tonnes) and much bigger than the EU (1.792 '000 metric tonnes).
Oil, sugar, meat, rice, bananas, coffee, iron, ... it's hard to think of a commodity in which Brazil is not a net exporter.
Trust me, the impact of the food crisis is way bigger than that of the credit crisis, no, this is nt my apocalyptic warning.
-
Apr 14 2008
-
Apr 12 2008
Some people swear by the "crane factor" (counting the number of cranes you see when driving from the airport to your hotel and deriving the economical growth of a city/country from it). I have another theory: "the online t-shirt shop factor". The number of online t-shirt shops per capita tell you something of the entrepeneurshop and creativity of a country.
So, I decided to do the test for Brazil. At least once a week I'll do a review of an online Brazilian T-shirt show and buy one of their T-shirts, delivered to our Brazilian address, since most are targeted to the national market. If you'd like to order one yourself: we can always take it with us from Brazil, just drop us a mail what you'd want.
1. Camiseteria - www.camiseteria.com.br
Camiseteria is the brainchild of Fabio Seixas. The Brazilian threadless; I even think there is some official link between Camiseteria and Threadless, but Fabio has to enlighten me on that one. T-shirts are only sold on the site, not in (Brazilian) stores. The site is high-class, and developed by Brazilian Ebit. There's a nice social networking integration where you can meet people who already bought the Tee you are considering and see how the T-shirt fits on them. Delivery only in Brazil (you need a CEP nr).
I ordered: Welcome to Rio and Birdy. Price per T-shirt: 55 R$ (20,6 €).
RSS feed of the Camiseteria Blog and New Products.
-
Apr 8 2008
Rock Werchter or Benicassim? Sigur Ros, Rosin Murphy come and Gnarls Barkley to both.
But Benicassim has:
Booka Shade
El Hijo (I'm a big fan of Abel Hernandez his new playgarden)
Facto Delafé y Las Flores Azules
In contrast to... Monza and Zita Swoon.
Too bad that Benicassim has been converted into a brick desert. We'll stick to a sunday afternoon chill at El Devino instead of those European mega-events. -
Mar 28 2008
It's amazing to which extent the current economical condition of Belgium is not daily frontpage news. Earlier this morning the news came out that Belgian's inflation rate of March went up to 4,39% . This is the same inflation rate as the expection as Brazil for 2008 (4,42%). And it is also where the comparison between Belgium and Brasil stops:
- Brazil will grow 5% this year, Belgium at most 1,4%.
- The buying power of Brazilians is increasing. In January the minimal wage went up 9%. Moreover, with credit to GDP only at 35% (compared to 200% in the US), there is considerable room for increased consumer and corporate leverage in Brazil. In Belgium the real buying power is decreasing drastically.
- Brazil has a positive trade balance, Belgium on the other hand is struggling to keep its trade balance in the black.
- Brazil became a net creditor, the Lisboa reform program will tell you that Belgium aims for a 0,6% budget surplus in 2008 to reduce its massive piles of debt, well let me tell you: not in a thousand years is our country gonna make that.
- And on top of that, we have a freaking Belgian timebomb of an upcoming boom of elderly people which we can only support with a 70% occupation rate (10% more than today) and more productivity. A 70% occupancy rate? Which country can reach that? And more productivity? Are Belgians robots or what? Belgium is already the country in the world where the satisfaction of people with their lives is decreasing fastest. In contrast with Brazil, where that rate is increasing. I'll write more about this soon; I believe this is even more alarming than the Belgian state of the economy.
Read that news again people, Belgium will have a growth rate in 2008 no more than 1,4%. Have you got any idea how dramatic this news is when mixed with the budget problems and the alarm on our greying society?
So, what can Belgium do?
1. Become more productive? Highly unlikeable. Rather the contrary, the possibities of productivity gains in emerging countries is far bigger. Ask Arcelor, Peugeot, Coca Cola or even our own Inbev.
2. A participation rate of 70%? People working until their 68 or what? Comon.
There's only one way, really: we need to drasdtically review our immigration policies.
Belgium has 1 million people with a foreign nationality and a permit to stay. We need to make a cleare public statement what this million people bring back to the Belgium society. I can't understand why this figure hasn't been made public yet. Belgium has 415.000 muslims. How many of them are Belgian, how many of foreign nationality. I want to know what the cost/benefit balance is of those of foreign nationality (the majority). A simple question, why can't we get a simple answer?
Why do those 1 million foreigner with a stay permit get OCMW aid, health care, social housing, free Dutch classes, integration courses,...?
I have no problems with people wanting to start a future in Belgium. I did the same going to Brazil. Brazil has been grown on immigration. But in a 'survival of the fittest' way.
People who want to come to Belgium? Fine, here are the steps:
1. When you arrive, you get no health care, OCMW support, housing support, unemployment beneift. Even not when married to a Belgian.
2. When you get a job, you get health care. When you fall out of work in the first 5 years after arrival in Belgium, you get 3 months unemployment support and free health care. If you haven't found a job within 3 months, too bad.
3. Dutch lessons: ask your employer to pay for you, or learn it yourself. It's not that hard, is it?
4. Integration courses? Open your eyes and read the newspaper.
5. Out of a job longer than 12 months in a row: too bad. Either you invest 50.000 EU in Belgium and start your own business, or you go back home.
6. Nationality? When you managed to stay 10 years in Belgium and as thus proved that you contribute to our society.
Whatever your color, whatever your nationality.
You go to a a Mosque, Umbanda or Macumba temple? I couldn't care less, as long as you contribute to our society and abide our laws.
This is exactly how foreigners are treated coming to Brazil. And I wonder what's so wrong or even undemocratic about it.
Once again, I want to know what the million foreigners in Belgium contribute to our society and when the balance is negative, what the government will do to alter this negative balance drastically. With those gains the Belgian government can lower the company and labour taxes. Maybe Belgium has a future then. -
Mar 25 2008
Today Brazil clocked on more than 5 million cars driving with flex engines. Most car manufacturers have a local plant in Brazil. I explained already why. Most of these cars are produced with flex engines, which run both on ethanol and gasoline. People like having a backup of gasoline; in some rare remote places, they don't have ethanol pumps. But in most states all the pumps have both ethanol and gasoline. I drove for two years with a Peugeot with flex engine; a big pleasure, especially for your wallet. Contrary to the US, the Brazilian government doesn't subsidize the production of ethanol though. The production of the Brazilian ethanol from sugarcane has a much positiver yield than the yield from mais in the US, and much more productive than the production of biodiesel from poppyseed flowers in Europe. The latter even has a net negative energy yield. Only in Europe.
PS 1,69 R$ = 0,62 € per liter ethanol alcool. The price of a liter of gasoline is currently 0,917 € in Brazil. -
Mar 25 2008
We're currently managing projects in 4 countries on 3 continents. I won't go into details, the website of WillPower Group will reveal more later this spring. We've been working hard on the reporting structures the last years; not in the least the budgettary and cashflow side. What's still lacking though is an idea on the amount of manhours spend on each project. We are now thinking of implementing an efficient timetracking system.
We've tried Harvest for a while, but it is too complex because it is based on a typical agency structure where personnel has to input ours and one central person has to sign those hours off before clients are billed. In our case, the reporting facet is more important. We've tried Fourteen Dayz today and were happily surprised. Yet, the pricing structure is somewhat odd, for our needs we would have to pay 99 US$ per month.
And then we stumbled on Tick, which integrates smoothly into our Basecamp. Anybody who has second thoughts on the matter before we sign up? -
Mar 25 2008
Portuguese is a beautiful language. Only when you start learning it, you realise how omnipresent the language is. Just listen to Zenfm for a day and count the number of songs with Portuguese lyrics. Yes, even Nelly Furtado sings in Portuguese.
But today I discovered to my great shame that the songs of Lali Puna I have been listening to for years (Tridecoder of 1999 is still my favorite album). Only this year I have been taking Portuguese courses in Belgium with a Portuguese-speaking teacher. Before I always had Brazilian teachers. And let me tell you: Brazilian Portuguese is very different from European Portuguese. This is what happens when you land as a Brazilian in Lisbon...
Brazilian Portuguese is much easier to understand than the cryptic language they speak in Portugual. Which is why probably I never discovered that Lali Puna, who lives in Munic, is singing many of her songs in Portuguese. Contratempo, Toca-Discos, Superlotado and Rapariga da Banheira are all Portuguese songs of her. Beautiful words and an amazing good pronounciation for someone with German roots... I only didn't succeed in decyphering the lyrics of "Rapariga da Banheira". In Portugal the title would translate as "Girl from the bathtub", in Brazil it would be "Hooker from the bathtub". If you can decypher the lyrics from me, I will send you 6 home-made Pasteis de Nata; no one makes them better then I do.
Learning Chines is seriously overrated, a European can never get to a level where he can conduct business meetings, write contracts or e-mails in less than 5 years. I believe you can learn Portuguese to a level where you master it perfectly, yet with a slight 'sotaque'. 330 million people speak Spanish, 220 million people speak Portuguese. The only difference is that far less people speak Portuguese as a second language than Spanish, which makes your competitive advantage far bigger when you speak Portuguese rather than Spanish. -
Mar 11 2008
A buy advice for bot Brazilian Bonds and stocks? Both?
-
Mar 11 2008
Not many will following me in my reasoning, but I believe Argentina is full of opportunities. Not in the last place because of the FX opportunity against the Euro (plot the chart on 10 years). Anybody who is into farming or any production industry with growth potential? I'll gladly drop by on our Latam trip in April.
And yet, I'm in doubt today. I have been thinking for the past weeks to buy Cresud shares on NASDAQ. Cresud is Argentina’s largest publicly traded agri-commodities firm. It is controlled by successful manager Eduardo Elsztain. Farming activities include producing crops, beef-cattle and milk. Cresud has been adding to its herd in recent quarters and now owns about 88,000 heads of cattle. Cattle prices are up more than 50% since 2002 and should rise further as emerging countries move towards diets richer in protein. Its principal crops include wheat, corn, soybean and sunflower. Asian demand for soybeans remains high because soy protein is central to human and livestock diets, again pushing prices higher. More importantly, Cresud is also the largest agricultural land owner in Argentina, with more than one million acres, and has significant commercial property interests in Buenos Aires. This makes the valuation rationale straightforward. The company owns more than $300m in commercial property and about $350m in farmland. Cresud also has $120m-$140m in cows, crops and cash. That translates into a value of approximately $750m or $770m against a market cap of $350m. And that’s without considering the potential of its farming activities. At 10,1 EU, the stock is really cheap. And I know, there's the Argentinian bureaucracy and tax, management skimming off profits,... But still I believe the fundaments of the stock make it a buy opportunity. Anybody an opinion? -
Mar 11 2008
This weekend we stumbled over Lugares Comunes. The New York Times translates the title of the movie into 'Common Places', they didn't understand a thing about the movie when that's their best shot. 'Common Ground' is what a translation from Spanish would sound like.
I've been a big fan of Adolfo Aristarain for many years now. If he would be born in another country he would probably be a sort of classic film-maker in the history of cinema. But he isn't, the man is Argentinian. Argentina intrigates me endlessly, especially now. The Pesos is on a historical low and in times when there's no hope, I believe in countries. Argentina is one of those examples. And the movie deals exactly with these questions:
How to change without loosing your ideals?
How to get old and feel as the first day of your youth?
How to keep loving the same woman during all your life?
How to start again when all the hopes are over?
Basic questions. But I don't hear them often (enough) when living in Belgium. Belgians have so many opinions, debates, thoughts,... We are so wise. But seldomly do I have a conversation where I see my friends asking themselves these questions in a broader perspective.
This film is poetry into a movie. One of the best scripts contents of the Latin American cinema. Aristarain shows one more time to be one of the best ever Argentinean directors. Below is my favorite scene. Take your time to enjoy it.
Tags
American protectionism ANC Andrew Feinstein Apartamento em Niteroi Argentina argentina Azul Belgian-strike belgium biodiesel bonds borderlinx BOVESPA bovespa Brazilian_economy brazilian_real_currency_rate Brazil weekly news carbon casa casa em Florianopolis Colinas do Mar COPE credit crisis deflation dollar entrepeneurs environment ethanol EU recession exchange external_debt flights florianopolis food Gafisa GDP Brazil German_productivity global recession inflation Inga innovation interest rate Brazil interest rate South Africa keatingeconomics Latin America leisuretime Mbeki movie mozambique music national credit act Oceanair oil opportunity petrobras planning prime productivity real Real recession SAR sequoia solar South Africa south africa South_African_Economy south_africa_real_estate_2009 stagflation stocks timetracking united_states US economy 2009 US recession US_economy V-shape recession venezuela oil southafrica Zuma
Recent Comments
- Judith on Venezuela and South Africa: Signing Major Energy Deal I think I allready have been informed ab ...
- LuckyLuke on Linkedin discussion on BRIC countries Do you know that there is diet plan base ...
- JakeBoummaNom on Linkedin discussion on BRIC countries Hi to all. Hope i'm wellcome here. ...
- Illulavop on Linkedin discussion on BRIC countries http://imgwebsearch.com/35357/img0/casin ...
- fieftRopHoife on Linkedin discussion on BRIC countries Hi I'm going to buy a bike. Counld someo ...
- fieftRopHoife on Linkedin discussion on BRIC countries Hey I'm going to buy a bike. Counld some ...