Investing In Brazil – Emerging Market Country Update

Latin American stocks are down sharply in the last month or so, and problems in Brazil have been the leading cause. A range of political and economic problems exploded in a short time. This article takes a deep look the situation in Brazil and concludes that it is leaderless. It appears that the military might step in to restore some structure to the country.

The Brazil of mid-2018 is a frightened, leaderless, shockingly pessimistic country. It is a country where four years of scandal, violence and economic destruction have obliterated faith in not just President Michel Temer, not just the political class, but in democracy itself. It is a country where there will be elections in October, but most voters profess little faith in any of the candidates. Given that vacuum, many Brazilians – perhaps 40 percent of them, according to a new private poll circulating among worried politicians – believe the military should somehow act to restore order. Amid this week’s strike, the clamor became so loud that both Temer and a senior military official had to publicly deny the possibility of an imminent coup.