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Brazil at a crossroads
Avoiding Argentinean contagion attests to how far Brazil has come. But will the victor in this fall's presidential election depart from the steady path to reform?
Avoiding Argentinean contagion attests to how far Brazil has come. But will the victor in this fall's presidential election depart from the steady path to reform?
作者：Deepak Gopinath
March 2002
亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者杂志
1月7日在阿根廷宣布that it was abandoning its decade-old dollar-peso peg and promptly plunged deeper into political and economic chaos, Brazil tapped the international capital markets for $1 billion. Demand from investors for the country's ten-year bonds was so great - $2.1 billion in bids - that Brazil upped the ante to $1.25 billion. The securities carried a stiff coupon of 12.6 percent, some 7.5 percentage points over that of U.S. Treasuries; but Argentina's risk premium had spiked to fully 40 percentage points over Treasuries.
The clear message: Brazil is no Argentina. The country is doing just fine, thank you, compared with its distressed southern neighbor (see related story, page 59) or, even more dramatically, the Brazil of a decade ago.
Despite the global downturn, in 2001 the country eked out economic growth of 1.6 percent, as it registered a $2.6 billion trade surplus, its first since 1994. Inflation was held to 7.7 percent - a far cry from the triple-digit rates of the 1980s - and foreign direct investment reached $23 billion. And last month, in a sign of confidence in the economy, the central bank cut interest rates by 25 basis points.
"I'm bullish on Brazil," declares the country's respected central bank president, Armínio Fraga, who helped steer the economy around the shoals of Argentina, an energy shortage, a post-September 11 liquidity squeeze and a global slowdown, all in the past year. "Once the international scene calms down and once we clear the political uncertainty in the elections at the end of the year, we should see further growth, assuming whoever comes next [as president] is reasonable."
Fraga's view is shared by seasoned observers. "Brazil's economic team has succeeded in implementing a series of economic reforms, a number of them substantial," says Citigroup senior vice chairman and veteran emerging-markets debt negotiator William Rhodes. "While a new government may change some economic policies, I don't think Brazil will turn back on reforms already on the books."
但今年10月全国大选的获胜者会像弗拉加希望的那样“合理”吗？现任总统费尔南多·恩里克·卡多佐（Fernando Henrique Cardoso）的继任者是否会是一位像他一样致力于渐进但无情的改革进程的政治家？这一改革进程已使巴西能够摆脱阿根廷的蔓延，并利用国际资本市场一举获得全年的外债配额？
无论谁获胜，都必须与新兴市场国家共同面临的窘境搏斗，但巴西的情况尤其复杂：凝聚政治意愿进行改革，这可能是痛苦的，但却是赢得国际市场持久信心所必需的。”进退两难的是，巴西人现在处于一种不稳定的均衡状态，除非他们推动改革，否则他们可能会发现自己陷入危机，”总部位于康涅狄格州格林威治的BCP证券公司研究主管沃尔特·莫拉诺（Walter Molano）说他们要么前进，要么后退。”
Brazil may have survived the fallout from Argentina, but country analysts and government and development bank officials caution that this is no time for policymakers - or investors - to take for granted the country's brighter prospects. In Brazil's past, recovery has too often turned out to be only remission. As Fraga himself tells Institutional Investor: "We need to keep pushing. We are not where we would like to be yet. Our borrowing spreads are still quite high, so we haven't relaxed."
Brazil faces plenty of economic pitfalls amid global recession, but politics may represent the most immediate threat to the country's well-being. The forthcoming elections amount in large part to a referendum on eight years of orthodox neoliberal economic policy, such as privatization and fiscal and social security reform. President Cardoso, however, cannot stand for reelection, and his designated successor - the notoriously uncharismatic former health minister Jose Serra - is lagging in the polls.
Meanwhile, candidates from the left - notably, Partido dos Trabalhadores leader Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva and Rio de Janeiro's populist governor and leader of the Partido Socialista Brasileiro, Anthony Garotinho - have registered strong support. Further blurring the electoral picture is the rise in the polls of Roseana Sarney, conservative governor of the impoverished northeastern Maranhão state and daughter of a former president.
许多投资者认为，塞拉仍将占上风。即使卡多佐没有这样做，他们也怀疑卡多佐的继任者是否会显著改变当前的经济政策。”巴西实际上是一个相对成熟的民主国家，我不认为选举会带来巨大的风险。即使卢拉当选，我也看不到财政政策的根本转变，”杰罗姆·布斯（jeromebooth）说，他为伦敦阿什莫尔集团（ashmoregroup）管理着12.5亿美元的新兴市场债务与阿根廷形成鲜明对比的是，巴西的政策是可预测的。”
Predictable, perhaps, but not without many of the same challenges that confront Argentina. Brazil is burdened with $280 billion of net public sector debt, making for a debt-to-GDP ratio of 53 percent, equivalent to that of Argentina. Moreover, one third of Brazil's debt is linked to the dollar and half is indexed to short-term interest rates; Brazil's ability to service the debt is thus highly vulnerable to currency fluctuations and the external environment. Brazil's 7.7 percent inflation last year was actually almost twice the 4 percent target. The country is running a $23 billion current-account deficit, making it overly dependent on foreign investors.
"If Brazil can't find financing for its current-account deficit, it could have another devaluation," warns BCP Securities' Molano. To bolster the weak real (which declined 15 percent in the first half of 2001), combat inflation and contend with the fiscal deficit, Fraga has had to push interest rates up to 19 percent, crimping economic growth. And indeed, many Brazilians are fed up with slow growth and high borrowing costs. They also want the government to do more to attack crime, which has become an emotional election issue.
The reform effort, conducted at a deliberate pace to avoid political upheaval, is incomplete. The government needs to do more to curtail federal and provincial spending. It hasn't dared to tackle public sector pension abuses. Brazil's tangled tax system, jury-rigged to meet short-term fiscal targets, discourages investment. Moreover, investors keeping a wary eye on Argentina are scrutinizing Brazil for similar fiscal slippage.
The chaos in Argentina could play out in curiously conflicting ways in Brazil's election, suggest analysts. On the one hand, it could strengthen the populist left because of sympathy for Argentinean "victims" of foreign banks and International Monetary Fund (read: U.S.) austerity measures. On the other hand, many voters may be grateful to the Cardoso government for having spared Brazil the fate of Argentina and thus be inclined to elect his chosen successor, Serra.
有一点似乎是肯定的：由于选民关注候选人经济政策的不确定性以及他们组建可信经济团队的能力，预选操作和辩论将加剧市场波动。”我们可以纪念这样一个事实：巴西从未经历过最糟糕的情况，2002年我持谨慎乐观的态度ã总部设在圣保罗的债券评级和经济咨询公司但我们面临着新的风险因素：即政治不连续性——每当民调显示反对党政客上升时，政策变化影响商业信心的风险。”
Indeed, many foreign investors and Brazilians would like to see Congress pass a law guaranteeing formal central bank independence. That, they believe, is the key to ensuring stability during the political transition. The immediate idea is to keep Fraga, who has run the central bank since 1999, in office for at least another year. "Armínio is seen as a demigod," says Rabello de Castro, an adviser to Sarney's center-right Partido da Frente Liberal. "He's powerful, glorious but mortal. We need to give him a mandate and a constitution." Many analysts doubt, however, that such a sweeping law will pass in this election year.
Fraga，甚至超过美国联邦储备委员会的艾伦格林斯潘，是他国家经济的一个亮度。Cardoso 1994年的真正计划制定了一种爬行PEG汇率，帮助将通胀从1,100％降低到1997年。但政府超支和亚洲金融危机的辐射结合在巴西的信心失败。到1999年1月，中央银行无法捍卫巴西货币，被迫放弃挂钩，将真正的困扰击败美元兑美元。下个月的Cardoso匆匆讨好了Fraga离开他的工作作为纽约索罗斯基金管理的投资组合经理，以使经济从螺旋流入恶性通货膨胀和经济衰退。Fraga迅速移动，增加利率并实施一个阵地目标系统，他的成功将他的声誉作为可靠的政策制定者。
过去几年，政府在财政和货币政策方面取得了重大进展。巴西拥有3.7%的主要财政盈余（即不包括利息支出的预算余额）；1997年，它的赤字为1%。国会已经对联邦和地方政府的借贷设定了限制。而弗拉加的通胀目标计划也基本成功。中国央行确实没有达到去年的4%（正负2%）的目标，但有望实现今年的3.5%（正负2%）的目标。
Bolstered by a sound monetary policy, Brazil's economy appeared to have rebounded in 2000, with growth a respectable 4.5 percent and inflation hovering around 6 percent. The country attracted $30 billion of foreign direct investment that year. The mood was buoyant.
Then came the horrors of 2001: energy shortages, a global slowdown, September 11 and Argentina's economic collapse. By midyear the real was being buffeted by investor concerns about whether Argentina could maintain its dollar peg and service its debt. Brazil's currency began to slide against the dollar, meaning that the country was going to have a difficult time servicing its domestic debt. A weaker real also threatened higher inflation, which in turn would force up interest rates and put a damper on already anemic economic growth.
Early in the year, when the outlook for the economy was still rosy, investors fretted that Brazil would face a $6 billion gap in financing its current-account deficit, which was expected to grow because of rising imports. Fraga sought to allay the market's qualms by announcing that the central bank would provide the $6 billion, in daily increments of $50 million. Still, by August investors and corporations, increasingly nervous about neighboring Argentina, were loading up on dollar hedges. Fraga had to find a way to stem the real's decline, lest the central bank lose control of inflation. He made shorting the real less attractive by increasing bank reserve and capitalization requirements - but met with little success.
After September 11 Fraga reversed course. The real had dropped 16 percent in three months, to 2.84 to the dollar by mid-September. Brazil's risk premium had begun to move up in lockstep with Argentina's. "There was a moment, after September 11 in particular and after Argentina's economy deteriorated, where we went through what we should call a bit of a panic here," confides Fraga.
他开始向市场注入与美元挂钩的实物债券，以满足市场对美元对冲的需求；央行在9月和10月发行了价值约90亿美元的债券。弗拉加实际上是在押注全球流动性泛滥，因为各国央行都打开了漏洞，全球投资者对反恐战争的关注将转移阿根廷的注意力，并减轻雷亚尔的压力。
这基本上是发生的事情。到了10月市场情绪转移了，真正的开始恢复。它帮助，巴西早些时候谈判了150亿美元的紧急国际货币基金组织套餐，帮助它过于9月11日的流动性紧缩。此外，鼓励贸易平衡和外国直接投资数据促进投资者对巴西债务动态的担忧。抢购美元联系的债券的公司必须匆忙放松长美元的职位，帮助加速真正的反弹。到12月中旬，货币从9月份的低价上涨了21％，巴西的国家风险下降了360个基点;同时，阿根廷突破了2,700个基点。“Fraga令一点敢打赌，将会有积极的消息，”高盛和公司的新兴市场研究领导者Paulo Leme说：“它最终成为一个非常熟练的策略，并解释了为什么真实的迅速感谢。”
尽管如此，Fraga的动作是有争议的。今年早些时候他表示，利率将会下降，在这里，他是筹集利率。这让他成为投资者和普通巴西人之间的信任衡量标准。当Fraga转移策略时，一些持有长美元职位的人感到灼伤。“许多人丢钱，”巴西的联邦·德纳·德·比斯·德·投资队的负责人埃德玛巴哈。
Other market participants felt Fraga had actually increased the real's volatility. "The central bank allowed the real to devalue too much," says Gustavo Loyola, a former central bank president and now an economist at São Paulo-based Tendências Consultoria Integrada. "The foreign exchange market in Brazil is not deep, so when the central bank upsets these markets, they tend to become overvolatile."
Quibbles aside, it looked as though Fraga had steered Brazil back into the clear. And after the January bond issue, Brazilian risk appeared to have "decoupled" from Argentina's. Although Brazil's risk premium remained higher than those of many other emerging markets, it was no longer tracking Argentina's: Financial contagion appeared to be a dead issue.
Having survived 2001, Fraga and other officials are optimistic that Brazil can pick up where it left off. Fraga ticks off the reasons for his optimism: progress in controlling inflation, sounder fiscal policy, reform of the banking sector, the move to a floating exchange rate and a start on reforming the state apparatus.
但从这里到那里还有很长的路要走。首先，目前仍有相当一部分危机在蔓延。”阿根廷仍然影响着巴西。巴西毕尔巴鄂银行（Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Brasil）首席经济学家奥克塔维奥德巴罗斯（Octavio de Barros）补充说：“巴西的国家风险与其他新兴市场国家的国家风险之间的差距仍然很大。”
Brazilian banks don't have significant exposure to Argentina but may be affected indirectly, through corporate customers whose business with Argentina has dried up. According to the influential Federação das Indústrias do Etado de São Paulo, its members lost $1.2 billion to $2 billion in outstanding receivables due from Argentinean firms in 2001. "Companies with receivables are in bad shape," says Maurice Costin, Fiesp's director of international relations and foreign trade. "The second big problem is that Argentina was a very big importer of finished products. For the time being, everything has stopped. This will mean another $2 billion in lost sales this year."
由uncertaint蔓延将会加剧y surrounding the forthcoming elections. "We see a lot of volatility in economic variables caused by uncertainty about the candidates," says Alkimar Moura, chief financial officer of state-owned Banco do Brasil. Analysts don't expect any candidate to win the 50 percent of the vote needed to prevail in the first round, forcing the top two candidates into a runoff.
Either Sarney - whose PFL is part of Cardoso's coalition - or Cardoso candidate Serra is expected to be pitted in the second round against the PT's Lula, a four-time presidential candidate. As of late January polls showed Lula favored by 26 percent of voters, Sarney by 23 percent and Serra by 7 percent. Garotinho, Rio de Janeiro's populist governor, has 15 percent. The remainder of the electorate is divided among marginal candidates.
Many analysts and economists are operating on the assumption that a candidate from the current coalition - that is, Serra or Sarney - will wind up beating Lula, who has shown himself to be unable to expand his appeal beyond his core base in previous elections. "Neither Serra nor Roseana are candidates of deep change," says economist Loyola. "In a sense, it will be a continuation of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. But if another candidate wins, like Lula or Garotinho, the market will reflect a high degree of risk, and interest rates could go up."
How likely is this? "There is a risk," says banker Bacha, a friend of Serra's, "that Serra doesn't climb much in the polls but succeeds in taking votes away from Sarney. That would leave Lula and Garotinho in the second round."
阿根廷的崩溃使选举更加复杂。”阿根廷为巴西经济团队的信誉辩护，后者在9月份受到质疑，”高盛的Leme认为。Walder de Goes补充说，Goes e Consultores Associados是一家位于巴西的政治咨询公司í“人们会明白，卢拉很危险，可能会造成阿根廷这样的危机。”
但这可能是如此。阿根廷的烦恼“可以帮助政府，但也可以努力加强抗抑化地位，”Banco Do Brasil的Moura说。纽约汇丰证券的新兴市场领导的基督徒Deseglise警告说：“市场一直专注于金融蔓延，而不是政治传染 - 这可能会更加损害。”卢拉的经济顾问Guido Mantega致力于“阿根廷发生的事情是对反对派的武器：阿根廷自行犯了许多错误，但它也遵循了国际货币基金组织的政策。恐惧可能有利于我们的青睐。“
Observers are concerned about the view of some of the presidential candidates, particularly Lula and Serra (Sarney's economic program is unknown), that the root cause of Brazil's external vulnerability lies not, as the Cardoso team believes, in fiscal deficits but in current-account deficits. Both Serra and Lula favor government industrial policy to boost exports and promote import substitution. But such interventionism, say skeptics, risks undermining Brazil's economic stability. "The danger is that privileging this type of policy could increase protectionism - direct and indirect subsidies for exports - and could be inflationary," says Loyola.
业务谨慎支持强调出口s and industrial policy. "The government has to gear itself more to industry and less to finance," says Fiesp's Costin. "It is not that we want inflation or protection, but we want incentives to increase production domestically." Executives have long criticized Brazil's high interest rates and inefficient tax regime. "Cardoso's biggest accomplishment was bringing stability into the economy," says Alberto Weisser, CEO of Bunge, a White Plains, New York-based agribusiness firm that has invested more than $1.5 billion in Brazil. "But we need tax reform."
A former metalworker and union leader, Lula has in the past rejected Cardoso's market-oriented policies and, more recently, had flattering things to say about Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's radical president. At January's World Social Forum in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, Lula suggested that repayment of Brazil's foreign debt be made contingent on a reduction in poverty levels. "The whole world would be sensitive enough not to allow children to die of hunger because debt has to be paid," he declared.
For the markets, Lula's election would be the worst-case scenario. Yet aside from the occasional rhetorical flourish, he has been trying to recast himself as an economic moderate. "The PT is a fiscally responsible party," says Mantega, an economics professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas in São Paulo. "Our program is not too different from the government's. We will see similar programs from all the candidates. The people know the government has made many mistakes - low growth, big social problems, crime - they know that the PT is more capable of resolving social problems."
The PT has demonstrated fiscal conservatism in running local governments, but its policies emphasize growth rather than stability. Mantega believes that Brazil's inflation target for 2002, for instance, is too rigid. "Inflation targeting is useful for the market, but the targets must be realistic," he says. "To meet its low target, the government maintains high interest rates, and this doesn't permit growth." Mantega also argues that boosting exports, implementing industrial policy and reforming the tax system won't erode fiscal stability. "This is not a question of increasing deficits," he says, "but of reorienting money already in government institutions."
Many observers are sanguine about the ongoing economic debate. "The opposition is not socialist, it is interventionist," says Banco Bilbao Vizcaya's Barros. "They are honest but have a naive belief in government intervention. A good economic debate between now and the election will help define country risk. It will be a learning process for the opposition."
央行行长弗拉加认为，在需要保守的宏观经济管理方面存在着政治共识，如果财政责任得以维持，他对促进出口的建议并不太担心弗拉加说：“我无法想象有人在财政不负责任、通胀率上升或诸如此类的平台上运行这里不再有你可以免费得到东西的幻觉；而这种认识是非常健康的，在我看来，这将防止滑倒的发生。”
Yet fear of slippage is strong enough that investors have clamored for Fraga to remain on as central bank chief for at least a transitional period. Both Serra and Sarney would most likely invite him to stay on. Lula would not. "Fraga is a good technician, better than his predecessors, but he is very much identified with the policies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso," says Mantega.
The government is trying to push central bank independence through Congress to institutionalize the current arrangement whereby the government sets the inflation target and the central bank acts autonomously to meet it. Fraga himself has long been an advocate of central bank independence. "The law is just one more element in the process of reaching a certain social maturity as far as things macroeconomic are concerned," he says. "We've learned the hard way in Brazil: We have done some silly things with our monetary institutions over the years. We've had hyperinflation, debt defaults, asset freezes - and it didn't do us any good. Now we are looking at something that allowed us to sail through the terribly uncertain waters of 2001 reasonably well, and maybe in 2002 Congress will decide the time has come to revisit our central bank law."
然而，只有央行独立性的完整央行独立性，距离银行账单的机会仍然不确定，尽管Fraga以及银行家和投资者的支持。但如果他被塞拉或萨尼问他会妥善折磨会继续？“我觉得很受宠若惊，甚至问道，”他说。“如果新法律来，卡多斯总统要求我作为过渡期的一部分保持一点时间，我会这样做。除此之外，我宁愿不讨论。”
除选举外，巴西最大的不确定性是全球增长。“如果国际经济没有表现出恢复，它将伤害巴西的贸易和金融流动，”指出Banco做巴西的穆拉。“巴西的增长取决于外部条件。”如果没有足够的外国投资，巴西可能会面临债务紧缩，如果不是今年，那么下一个。1月，国际货币基金组织祝福政府的经济管理，但巴西需要减少其美元联系的债务。
这项任务将留给新政府。它可能必须做的不仅仅是追求Fraga的“合理”政策。“巴西不需要现状：这是一个具有爆炸性债务到GDP比率的国家，”纽约委员会证券首席拉丁美洲债务战略师“警告斯特拉克。“市场将期望新总统必须进行财政收紧，但新总统可能没有任务要这样做。”
对危机如此习以为常的巴西，还没有走出这场危机。
作者：Deepak Gopinath
March 2002
亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者杂志
1月7日在阿根廷宣布that it was abandoning its decade-old dollar-peso peg and promptly plunged deeper into political and economic chaos, Brazil tapped the international capital markets for $1 billion. Demand from investors for the country's ten-year bonds was so great - $2.1 billion in bids - that Brazil upped the ante to $1.25 billion. The securities carried a stiff coupon of 12.6 percent, some 7.5 percentage points over that of U.S. Treasuries; but Argentina's risk premium had spiked to fully 40 percentage points over Treasuries.
The clear message: Brazil is no Argentina. The country is doing just fine, thank you, compared with its distressed southern neighbor (see related story, page 59) or, even more dramatically, the Brazil of a decade ago.
Despite the global downturn, in 2001 the country eked out economic growth of 1.6 percent, as it registered a $2.6 billion trade surplus, its first since 1994. Inflation was held to 7.7 percent - a far cry from the triple-digit rates of the 1980s - and foreign direct investment reached $23 billion. And last month, in a sign of confidence in the economy, the central bank cut interest rates by 25 basis points.
"I'm bullish on Brazil," declares the country's respected central bank president, Armínio Fraga, who helped steer the economy around the shoals of Argentina, an energy shortage, a post-September 11 liquidity squeeze and a global slowdown, all in the past year. "Once the international scene calms down and once we clear the political uncertainty in the elections at the end of the year, we should see further growth, assuming whoever comes next [as president] is reasonable."
Fraga's view is shared by seasoned observers. "Brazil's economic team has succeeded in implementing a series of economic reforms, a number of them substantial," says Citigroup senior vice chairman and veteran emerging-markets debt negotiator William Rhodes. "While a new government may change some economic policies, I don't think Brazil will turn back on reforms already on the books."
但今年10月全国大选的获胜者会像弗拉加希望的那样“合理”吗？现任总统费尔南多·恩里克·卡多佐（Fernando Henrique Cardoso）的继任者是否会是一位像他一样致力于渐进但无情的改革进程的政治家？这一改革进程已使巴西能够摆脱阿根廷的蔓延，并利用国际资本市场一举获得全年的外债配额？
无论谁获胜，都必须与新兴市场国家共同面临的窘境搏斗，但巴西的情况尤其复杂：凝聚政治意愿进行改革，这可能是痛苦的，但却是赢得国际市场持久信心所必需的。”进退两难的是，巴西人现在处于一种不稳定的均衡状态，除非他们推动改革，否则他们可能会发现自己陷入危机，”总部位于康涅狄格州格林威治的BCP证券公司研究主管沃尔特·莫拉诺（Walter Molano）说他们要么前进，要么后退。”
Brazil may have survived the fallout from Argentina, but country analysts and government and development bank officials caution that this is no time for policymakers - or investors - to take for granted the country's brighter prospects. In Brazil's past, recovery has too often turned out to be only remission. As Fraga himself tells Institutional Investor: "We need to keep pushing. We are not where we would like to be yet. Our borrowing spreads are still quite high, so we haven't relaxed."
Brazil faces plenty of economic pitfalls amid global recession, but politics may represent the most immediate threat to the country's well-being. The forthcoming elections amount in large part to a referendum on eight years of orthodox neoliberal economic policy, such as privatization and fiscal and social security reform. President Cardoso, however, cannot stand for reelection, and his designated successor - the notoriously uncharismatic former health minister Jose Serra - is lagging in the polls.
Meanwhile, candidates from the left - notably, Partido dos Trabalhadores leader Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva and Rio de Janeiro's populist governor and leader of the Partido Socialista Brasileiro, Anthony Garotinho - have registered strong support. Further blurring the electoral picture is the rise in the polls of Roseana Sarney, conservative governor of the impoverished northeastern Maranhão state and daughter of a former president.
许多投资者认为，塞拉仍将占上风。即使卡多佐没有这样做，他们也怀疑卡多佐的继任者是否会显著改变当前的经济政策。”巴西实际上是一个相对成熟的民主国家，我不认为选举会带来巨大的风险。即使卢拉当选，我也看不到财政政策的根本转变，”杰罗姆·布斯（jeromebooth）说，他为伦敦阿什莫尔集团（ashmoregroup）管理着12.5亿美元的新兴市场债务与阿根廷形成鲜明对比的是，巴西的政策是可预测的。”
Predictable, perhaps, but not without many of the same challenges that confront Argentina. Brazil is burdened with $280 billion of net public sector debt, making for a debt-to-GDP ratio of 53 percent, equivalent to that of Argentina. Moreover, one third of Brazil's debt is linked to the dollar and half is indexed to short-term interest rates; Brazil's ability to service the debt is thus highly vulnerable to currency fluctuations and the external environment. Brazil's 7.7 percent inflation last year was actually almost twice the 4 percent target. The country is running a $23 billion current-account deficit, making it overly dependent on foreign investors.
"If Brazil can't find financing for its current-account deficit, it could have another devaluation," warns BCP Securities' Molano. To bolster the weak real (which declined 15 percent in the first half of 2001), combat inflation and contend with the fiscal deficit, Fraga has had to push interest rates up to 19 percent, crimping economic growth. And indeed, many Brazilians are fed up with slow growth and high borrowing costs. They also want the government to do more to attack crime, which has become an emotional election issue.
The reform effort, conducted at a deliberate pace to avoid political upheaval, is incomplete. The government needs to do more to curtail federal and provincial spending. It hasn't dared to tackle public sector pension abuses. Brazil's tangled tax system, jury-rigged to meet short-term fiscal targets, discourages investment. Moreover, investors keeping a wary eye on Argentina are scrutinizing Brazil for similar fiscal slippage.
The chaos in Argentina could play out in curiously conflicting ways in Brazil's election, suggest analysts. On the one hand, it could strengthen the populist left because of sympathy for Argentinean "victims" of foreign banks and International Monetary Fund (read: U.S.) austerity measures. On the other hand, many voters may be grateful to the Cardoso government for having spared Brazil the fate of Argentina and thus be inclined to elect his chosen successor, Serra.
有一点似乎是肯定的：由于选民关注候选人经济政策的不确定性以及他们组建可信经济团队的能力，预选操作和辩论将加剧市场波动。”我们可以纪念这样一个事实：巴西从未经历过最糟糕的情况，2002年我持谨慎乐观的态度ã总部设在圣保罗的债券评级和经济咨询公司但我们面临着新的风险因素：即政治不连续性——每当民调显示反对党政客上升时，政策变化影响商业信心的风险。”
Indeed, many foreign investors and Brazilians would like to see Congress pass a law guaranteeing formal central bank independence. That, they believe, is the key to ensuring stability during the political transition. The immediate idea is to keep Fraga, who has run the central bank since 1999, in office for at least another year. "Armínio is seen as a demigod," says Rabello de Castro, an adviser to Sarney's center-right Partido da Frente Liberal. "He's powerful, glorious but mortal. We need to give him a mandate and a constitution." Many analysts doubt, however, that such a sweeping law will pass in this election year.
Fraga，甚至超过美国联邦储备委员会的艾伦格林斯潘，是他国家经济的一个亮度。Cardoso 1994年的真正计划制定了一种爬行PEG汇率，帮助将通胀从1,100％降低到1997年。但政府超支和亚洲金融危机的辐射结合在巴西的信心失败。到1999年1月，中央银行无法捍卫巴西货币，被迫放弃挂钩，将真正的困扰击败美元兑美元。下个月的Cardoso匆匆讨好了Fraga离开他的工作作为纽约索罗斯基金管理的投资组合经理，以使经济从螺旋流入恶性通货膨胀和经济衰退。Fraga迅速移动，增加利率并实施一个阵地目标系统，他的成功将他的声誉作为可靠的政策制定者。
过去几年，政府在财政和货币政策方面取得了重大进展。巴西拥有3.7%的主要财政盈余（即不包括利息支出的预算余额）；1997年，它的赤字为1%。国会已经对联邦和地方政府的借贷设定了限制。而弗拉加的通胀目标计划也基本成功。中国央行确实没有达到去年的4%（正负2%）的目标，但有望实现今年的3.5%（正负2%）的目标。
Bolstered by a sound monetary policy, Brazil's economy appeared to have rebounded in 2000, with growth a respectable 4.5 percent and inflation hovering around 6 percent. The country attracted $30 billion of foreign direct investment that year. The mood was buoyant.
Then came the horrors of 2001: energy shortages, a global slowdown, September 11 and Argentina's economic collapse. By midyear the real was being buffeted by investor concerns about whether Argentina could maintain its dollar peg and service its debt. Brazil's currency began to slide against the dollar, meaning that the country was going to have a difficult time servicing its domestic debt. A weaker real also threatened higher inflation, which in turn would force up interest rates and put a damper on already anemic economic growth.
Early in the year, when the outlook for the economy was still rosy, investors fretted that Brazil would face a $6 billion gap in financing its current-account deficit, which was expected to grow because of rising imports. Fraga sought to allay the market's qualms by announcing that the central bank would provide the $6 billion, in daily increments of $50 million. Still, by August investors and corporations, increasingly nervous about neighboring Argentina, were loading up on dollar hedges. Fraga had to find a way to stem the real's decline, lest the central bank lose control of inflation. He made shorting the real less attractive by increasing bank reserve and capitalization requirements - but met with little success.
After September 11 Fraga reversed course. The real had dropped 16 percent in three months, to 2.84 to the dollar by mid-September. Brazil's risk premium had begun to move up in lockstep with Argentina's. "There was a moment, after September 11 in particular and after Argentina's economy deteriorated, where we went through what we should call a bit of a panic here," confides Fraga.
他开始向市场注入与美元挂钩的实物债券，以满足市场对美元对冲的需求；央行在9月和10月发行了价值约90亿美元的债券。弗拉加实际上是在押注全球流动性泛滥，因为各国央行都打开了漏洞，全球投资者对反恐战争的关注将转移阿根廷的注意力，并减轻雷亚尔的压力。
这基本上是发生的事情。到了10月市场情绪转移了，真正的开始恢复。它帮助，巴西早些时候谈判了150亿美元的紧急国际货币基金组织套餐，帮助它过于9月11日的流动性紧缩。此外，鼓励贸易平衡和外国直接投资数据促进投资者对巴西债务动态的担忧。抢购美元联系的债券的公司必须匆忙放松长美元的职位，帮助加速真正的反弹。到12月中旬，货币从9月份的低价上涨了21％，巴西的国家风险下降了360个基点;同时，阿根廷突破了2,700个基点。“Fraga令一点敢打赌，将会有积极的消息，”高盛和公司的新兴市场研究领导者Paulo Leme说：“它最终成为一个非常熟练的策略，并解释了为什么真实的迅速感谢。”
尽管如此，Fraga的动作是有争议的。今年早些时候他表示，利率将会下降，在这里，他是筹集利率。这让他成为投资者和普通巴西人之间的信任衡量标准。当Fraga转移策略时，一些持有长美元职位的人感到灼伤。“许多人丢钱，”巴西的联邦·德纳·德·比斯·德·投资队的负责人埃德玛巴哈。
Other market participants felt Fraga had actually increased the real's volatility. "The central bank allowed the real to devalue too much," says Gustavo Loyola, a former central bank president and now an economist at São Paulo-based Tendências Consultoria Integrada. "The foreign exchange market in Brazil is not deep, so when the central bank upsets these markets, they tend to become overvolatile."
Quibbles aside, it looked as though Fraga had steered Brazil back into the clear. And after the January bond issue, Brazilian risk appeared to have "decoupled" from Argentina's. Although Brazil's risk premium remained higher than those of many other emerging markets, it was no longer tracking Argentina's: Financial contagion appeared to be a dead issue.
Having survived 2001, Fraga and other officials are optimistic that Brazil can pick up where it left off. Fraga ticks off the reasons for his optimism: progress in controlling inflation, sounder fiscal policy, reform of the banking sector, the move to a floating exchange rate and a start on reforming the state apparatus.
但从这里到那里还有很长的路要走。首先，目前仍有相当一部分危机在蔓延。”阿根廷仍然影响着巴西。巴西毕尔巴鄂银行（Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Brasil）首席经济学家奥克塔维奥德巴罗斯（Octavio de Barros）补充说：“巴西的国家风险与其他新兴市场国家的国家风险之间的差距仍然很大。”
Brazilian banks don't have significant exposure to Argentina but may be affected indirectly, through corporate customers whose business with Argentina has dried up. According to the influential Federação das Indústrias do Etado de São Paulo, its members lost $1.2 billion to $2 billion in outstanding receivables due from Argentinean firms in 2001. "Companies with receivables are in bad shape," says Maurice Costin, Fiesp's director of international relations and foreign trade. "The second big problem is that Argentina was a very big importer of finished products. For the time being, everything has stopped. This will mean another $2 billion in lost sales this year."
由uncertaint蔓延将会加剧y surrounding the forthcoming elections. "We see a lot of volatility in economic variables caused by uncertainty about the candidates," says Alkimar Moura, chief financial officer of state-owned Banco do Brasil. Analysts don't expect any candidate to win the 50 percent of the vote needed to prevail in the first round, forcing the top two candidates into a runoff.
Either Sarney - whose PFL is part of Cardoso's coalition - or Cardoso candidate Serra is expected to be pitted in the second round against the PT's Lula, a four-time presidential candidate. As of late January polls showed Lula favored by 26 percent of voters, Sarney by 23 percent and Serra by 7 percent. Garotinho, Rio de Janeiro's populist governor, has 15 percent. The remainder of the electorate is divided among marginal candidates.
Many analysts and economists are operating on the assumption that a candidate from the current coalition - that is, Serra or Sarney - will wind up beating Lula, who has shown himself to be unable to expand his appeal beyond his core base in previous elections. "Neither Serra nor Roseana are candidates of deep change," says economist Loyola. "In a sense, it will be a continuation of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. But if another candidate wins, like Lula or Garotinho, the market will reflect a high degree of risk, and interest rates could go up."
How likely is this? "There is a risk," says banker Bacha, a friend of Serra's, "that Serra doesn't climb much in the polls but succeeds in taking votes away from Sarney. That would leave Lula and Garotinho in the second round."
阿根廷的崩溃使选举更加复杂。”阿根廷为巴西经济团队的信誉辩护，后者在9月份受到质疑，”高盛的Leme认为。Walder de Goes补充说，Goes e Consultores Associados是一家位于巴西的政治咨询公司í“人们会明白，卢拉很危险，可能会造成阿根廷这样的危机。”
但这可能是如此。阿根廷的烦恼“可以帮助政府，但也可以努力加强抗抑化地位，”Banco Do Brasil的Moura说。纽约汇丰证券的新兴市场领导的基督徒Deseglise警告说：“市场一直专注于金融蔓延，而不是政治传染 - 这可能会更加损害。”卢拉的经济顾问Guido Mantega致力于“阿根廷发生的事情是对反对派的武器：阿根廷自行犯了许多错误，但它也遵循了国际货币基金组织的政策。恐惧可能有利于我们的青睐。“
Observers are concerned about the view of some of the presidential candidates, particularly Lula and Serra (Sarney's economic program is unknown), that the root cause of Brazil's external vulnerability lies not, as the Cardoso team believes, in fiscal deficits but in current-account deficits. Both Serra and Lula favor government industrial policy to boost exports and promote import substitution. But such interventionism, say skeptics, risks undermining Brazil's economic stability. "The danger is that privileging this type of policy could increase protectionism - direct and indirect subsidies for exports - and could be inflationary," says Loyola.
业务谨慎支持强调出口s and industrial policy. "The government has to gear itself more to industry and less to finance," says Fiesp's Costin. "It is not that we want inflation or protection, but we want incentives to increase production domestically." Executives have long criticized Brazil's high interest rates and inefficient tax regime. "Cardoso's biggest accomplishment was bringing stability into the economy," says Alberto Weisser, CEO of Bunge, a White Plains, New York-based agribusiness firm that has invested more than $1.5 billion in Brazil. "But we need tax reform."
A former metalworker and union leader, Lula has in the past rejected Cardoso's market-oriented policies and, more recently, had flattering things to say about Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's radical president. At January's World Social Forum in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, Lula suggested that repayment of Brazil's foreign debt be made contingent on a reduction in poverty levels. "The whole world would be sensitive enough not to allow children to die of hunger because debt has to be paid," he declared.
For the markets, Lula's election would be the worst-case scenario. Yet aside from the occasional rhetorical flourish, he has been trying to recast himself as an economic moderate. "The PT is a fiscally responsible party," says Mantega, an economics professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas in São Paulo. "Our program is not too different from the government's. We will see similar programs from all the candidates. The people know the government has made many mistakes - low growth, big social problems, crime - they know that the PT is more capable of resolving social problems."
The PT has demonstrated fiscal conservatism in running local governments, but its policies emphasize growth rather than stability. Mantega believes that Brazil's inflation target for 2002, for instance, is too rigid. "Inflation targeting is useful for the market, but the targets must be realistic," he says. "To meet its low target, the government maintains high interest rates, and this doesn't permit growth." Mantega also argues that boosting exports, implementing industrial policy and reforming the tax system won't erode fiscal stability. "This is not a question of increasing deficits," he says, "but of reorienting money already in government institutions."
Many observers are sanguine about the ongoing economic debate. "The opposition is not socialist, it is interventionist," says Banco Bilbao Vizcaya's Barros. "They are honest but have a naive belief in government intervention. A good economic debate between now and the election will help define country risk. It will be a learning process for the opposition."
央行行长弗拉加认为，在需要保守的宏观经济管理方面存在着政治共识，如果财政责任得以维持，他对促进出口的建议并不太担心弗拉加说：“我无法想象有人在财政不负责任、通胀率上升或诸如此类的平台上运行这里不再有你可以免费得到东西的幻觉；而这种认识是非常健康的，在我看来，这将防止滑倒的发生。”
Yet fear of slippage is strong enough that investors have clamored for Fraga to remain on as central bank chief for at least a transitional period. Both Serra and Sarney would most likely invite him to stay on. Lula would not. "Fraga is a good technician, better than his predecessors, but he is very much identified with the policies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso," says Mantega.
The government is trying to push central bank independence through Congress to institutionalize the current arrangement whereby the government sets the inflation target and the central bank acts autonomously to meet it. Fraga himself has long been an advocate of central bank independence. "The law is just one more element in the process of reaching a certain social maturity as far as things macroeconomic are concerned," he says. "We've learned the hard way in Brazil: We have done some silly things with our monetary institutions over the years. We've had hyperinflation, debt defaults, asset freezes - and it didn't do us any good. Now we are looking at something that allowed us to sail through the terribly uncertain waters of 2001 reasonably well, and maybe in 2002 Congress will decide the time has come to revisit our central bank law."
然而，只有央行独立性的完整央行独立性，距离银行账单的机会仍然不确定，尽管Fraga以及银行家和投资者的支持。但如果他被塞拉或萨尼问他会妥善折磨会继续？“我觉得很受宠若惊，甚至问道，”他说。“如果新法律来，卡多斯总统要求我作为过渡期的一部分保持一点时间，我会这样做。除此之外，我宁愿不讨论。”
除选举外，巴西最大的不确定性是全球增长。“如果国际经济没有表现出恢复，它将伤害巴西的贸易和金融流动，”指出Banco做巴西的穆拉。“巴西的增长取决于外部条件。”如果没有足够的外国投资，巴西可能会面临债务紧缩，如果不是今年，那么下一个。1月，国际货币基金组织祝福政府的经济管理，但巴西需要减少其美元联系的债务。
这项任务将留给新政府。它可能必须做的不仅仅是追求Fraga的“合理”政策。“巴西不需要现状：这是一个具有爆炸性债务到GDP比率的国家，”纽约委员会证券首席拉丁美洲债务战略师“警告斯特拉克。“市场将期望新总统必须进行财政收紧，但新总统可能没有任务要这样做。”
对危机如此习以为常的巴西，还没有走出这场危机。