Word: downturned
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There was always a sweet bit of fiction in the notion that Ford (F) was so much better financially than GM (GM) or Chrysler that it could weather the global economic downturn no matter how brutal it turned. All of that magical thinking came to an end as the No.2 American car company said it would have to "restructure" its balance sheet, which has always been short-hand for finding a way to remain in business...
...downturn, the U.S. may look more like China than China does, at least economically...
...Lula" is President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (no relation to Efigênia), and most Brazilians believe he's the reason their country is surviving the current downturn better than other places. In past crises, Brazil was usually the nation in need of the largest life preserver. If it wasn't drowning under fiscal recklessness, it was being held under by draconian austerity plans. Brazil, the old joke goes, is the country of the future - and always will be. Now, in the middle of the worst global downturn for decades, Brazil could finally be the country...
...dysfunctional, its political system squalid, corruption endemic. But consider: 53% of Brazil's 190 million people now occupy the middle class, up from 42% in 2002. This increased social mobility happened at the same time the country's main stock index soared some 480% before last fall's downturn. Lula seems to have cracked Latin America's chronic conundrum: how to expand underachieving economies while reducing epic inequality. In so doing, he's created a model that's "an insurance ticket, not a lottery ticket," says Marcelo Neri, head of the Center for Social Policies in Rio de Janeiro...
...downturn has slowed growth, but it has not stopped it. To make Brazil even more business-friendly, the government is spending $263 billion on tax breaks and infrastructure. Like Lula's social projects, the Growth Acceleration Program, which began in 2007, was funded largely by high commodity prices, most of which have now plummeted. But Brazil seems to have invested the windfall smartly. Exports have been diversified so as to reduce reliance on commodities, and before the downturn the nation socked away a record $208 billion in foreign reserves. The banking system has remained well regulated, and so far seems...