[Plantagenet]

I'd be happy to consume more if the President of Brazil would give me more money to buy things.

C'mon Lula. Put your money where your mouth is....

[Keith_McClary]

Brazil to build ‘underwater cities’ to drill for oil

Brazil’s state oil company is planning to do away with offshore oil drilling platforms and replace them with automated “underwater cities” that extract oil.

In what could prove to be one of the most ambitious industrial projects ever undertaken, Petrobras is drawing up plans to place giant machinery and robots 6,000 feet under the sea floor, with humans controlling the oil-drilling “city” remotely
...
“Our target is that we won’t need platforms ten years from now,”

Though design and construction of the Space Shuttle began in the early 1970s, conceptualization actually began two decades earlier

IIRC, the Shuttle went 10 times over budget and needed 10 times longer between flights than planned.

How long will the Brazilians take to go from discovery to full production and at what cost?

Underwater Robotic Cities aren't Rocket Science.

[eXpat]

Yeah right...

[eXpat]

Brazil economy overtakes UK, says CEBR

Brazil has overtaken the UK as the world's sixth largest economy, an economic research group has said.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said its latest World Economic League Table showed Asian countries moving up and European countries falling back.

The CEBR also predicted that the UK economy would overtake France by 2016.

It also said the eurozone economy would shrink 0.6% in 2012 "if the euro problem is solved", or 2% if it is not.

CEBR chief executive Douglas McWilliams told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Brazil overtaking the UK was part of a growing trend.

"I think it's part of the big economic change, where not only are we seeing a shift from the west to the east, but we're also seeing that countries that produce vital commodities - food and energy and things like that - are doing very well and they're gradually climbing up the economic league table," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16332115

Brazil has overtaken the UK to become the world's sixth-largest economy, according to a team of economists. The banking crash of 2008 and the subsequent recession has relegated the UK to seventh place in 2011, behind South America's largest economy, which has boomed on the back of exports to China and the far east.

Russia and India are expected to benefit from a surge in growth over the next 10 years and push the UK into eighth place. Like most economies, India is struggling with high inflation and slowing growth, but its highly educated workforce and skills in growth areas from IT and services to engineering will push the economy into fifth place. After a decade of selling oil and gas to Europe and other parts of Asia, Russia will be at number four.

The only compensation for ministers concerned by Britain's relative fall is that France will fall at a faster pace. Nicolas Sarkozy can still boast that France is the fifth-largest economy behind the US at number one, China, Japan and Germany, but by 2020, the Centre for Economics and business Research (CEBR) forecasts it will fall past the UK into ninth spot. Germany will also slip to seventh place in 2020.

CEBR chief executive Douglas McWilliams said: "Brazil has beaten the European countries at soccer for a long time, but beating them at economics is a new phenomenon. Our world economic league table shows how the economic map is changing, with Asian countries and commodity-producing economies climbing up the league while we in Europe fall back."

Europe is expected to suffer a "lost decade" of low growth following a credit binge over the past 20 years. Paying back debts over a short timescale will restrict growth and prevent many countries, including the UK, from clawing back output lost in the banking crash for many years.

The European Union, recently described by one Chinese official as "a worn-out welfare society", will remain the world's largest collective trading bloc, though a recession next year is expected to hit global growth. The latest forecasts by the CEBR show world growth falling to 2.5% in 2012, a downward revision from the forecast made in September.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/26/brazil-overtakes-uk-economy

[dorlomin]

Was planning to post this. Its an interesting marker on the slow retreat of the west. The collapse in wage earning power brought about by the wholesale reduction of trade barriers is having the intended consaquence of creating a world that 'Hot, Crowded and Flat".

The workers of the west are falling towards the income levels of those in the global South, slowly for the moment but that will accelerate. Britain will fall faster than most because it deliberately ran down its manufacturing in favour of finance. It allowed the pound to remain high as North Sea reduced its trade gaps and its weaker industries were either deliberately or as an act of neglect allowed to collapse. Now it is completly beholden to finance it has a limited manufacturing base to largely turning out foreign desinged goods and little to jump start itself as a manufacturing economy with.

That said Brasil is a resource based economy and I doubt many are in need of reminding how limited that is.

Will be interesting though to see as the increasingly obvious slow decline of the west means extending the era of financial austerity, if the global south can continue to grow or itself begins to retreat as US and EU borrowing slows and incomes shrink. My oppinion is they will also slow in growth and perhaps contract, but that is only an opinion I dont have numbers to back it up.

[KingM]

How is Brazil overtaking the UK an example of a shift from the "west to the east?" Just curious.

[Plantagenet]

The IMF predicts that China will pass the USA to become the world's largest nation, in terms of GDP, in 2016.


Of course, such predictions are based on simple extrapolations of past trends.

[KingM]

The IMF predicts that China will pass the USA to become the world's largest nation, in terms of GDP, in 2016.


Of course, such predictions are based on simple extrapolations of past trends.

So in 20 years it will be 3X the size of the US and presumably using 3X the energy. Hard to see that happening.

[ObiWan]

Hard? I'm guessing IMF has the same credibility as Bert and Ernie on the topic of, say, quantum physics. Or Colin Campbell on the topic of peak oil, come to think of it.

[Plantagenet]

The IMF predicts that China will pass the USA to become the world's largest nation, in terms of GDP, in 2016.


Of course, such predictions are based on simple extrapolations of past trends.

So in 20 years it will be 3X the size of the US and presumably using 3X the energy. Hard to see that happening.

Of course not----the IMF is promulgating a fantasy by simplistically extrapolating past trends. In 20 years world oil production will be 25% or more lower than today, and even the US economy won't be the size of the US economy as projected by the IMF.

Nonetheless, its almost inevitable that in a few years China will surpass the US in GDP, just as Brazil recently passed the UK in GDP.

[dolanbaker]

How is Brazil overtaking the UK an example of a shift from the "west to the east?" Just curious.

From "western style economies!", to third world types that don't have established welfare/social services that help the weak, elderly & unemployed by providing income and healthcare etc.

[davep]

More than 1 million children work in Brazil

The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper says Wednesday that its analysis of preliminary 2010 census figures compiled by Brazil's government statistics agency shows that more than 1 million children between the ages of 10 and 14 were working last year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10015074

So that's what the UK is doing wrong...

[eXpat]

More than 1 million children work in Brazil

The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper says Wednesday that its analysis of preliminary 2010 census figures compiled by Brazil's government statistics agency shows that more than 1 million children between the ages of 10 and 14 were working last year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10015074

So that's what the UK is doing wrong...

Of course, children don´t eat that much, after all...

[eXpat]

Murders soar in Brazil city as police strike

The Brazilian government has sent federal troops to the state of Bahia to restore order after a labour strike by police opened the door to a crime wave, authorities said.

By Saturday, the homicide rate in the state capital of Salvador was up 117 per cent to 50 killings in four days since the strike started, according to figures from the government news service Agencia Brasil.

Thirty of those killings reportedly took place within 24 hours. A jump in lootings and assaults was also reported. "Police reject claims they should be held responsible for any violence ... and the government believes a hard core group of union leaders are fanning the flames of the violence," said Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from Salvador.

A judge has ruled the strike is illegal and 12 arrest warrants have been issued for union leaders, but police rallied in a show of defiance on Saturday by taking over the legislative assembly. "Neither the police on strike nor the government are willing to back down," our correspondent said.

Wage demands: In a televised message Jaques Wagner, Bahia's governor, called the police strike illegal. "A group of police using reprehensible methods, spreading fear among the population, caused disturbances in some parts of the state," said Wagner.

At the governor's request, President Dilma Rousseff sent a reported 2,000 Brazilian army soldiers and a contingent of 650 elite federal police troops to the nation's third-largest city. On Saturday, troops were seen patrolling the streets of Salvador, which is preparing to welcome millions of tourists for the annual Carnival festival.

Aljazeera

[eXpat]

Brazil: Bahia Is in State of Siege with Police on Strike and Criminals Roaming Streets

Shopping Iguatemi, the most popular shopping center in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. 3rd floor in front of Mc Donald's. I close my laptop while my two small children start fighting each other as usual. I tell them to stop. Finally they do. I put my laptop in the case. All at a sudden my wife starts shouting. "Let's run, get a kid and run, now".

For a second I don't understand what's happening. I turn myself around and then I can the commotion. A wave of people running, shouting, the terror in their eyes while they come in our direction knocking down everything in front of them: tables, chairs, advertising signs. The throng is out of control: they are hundreds creating a human tsunami that destroys everything in its path.

I grab my little kid and run with him in my arms just to the bottom end of McDonalds. The wave slowly stops while people still seem to be panicky. I hide my family behind an advertising panel. And then people apparently terrified start asking the same question: What's happening?

Welcome to the arrastão (dragnet), a hellish Brazilian experience which has become a common occurrence in Bahia. A group of criminals, from a couple to dozens of them, hiding their faces with masks start running in any public place like a beach or a shopping center. In their race they steal purses and whatever they can get, pushing everybody and creating a tsunami of panic that can do more damage than the arrastão itself.

The arrastão described here happened while the local military police is on strike asking for better salaries in a very tough confrontation with the Government of Bahia. The situation is so serious that the Legislative Assembly has been under siege for a few days now by the striking policemen.

The government of Bahia, on the other hand, has asked the Federal government to send federal troops to help contain the situation.

In the interior of the state the situation is even worse. In the city of Feira de Santana, for example, the situation is so bad that the bus drivers went on strike fearing for their life. In Itabuna businesses close their doors afraid they might be assaulted.

It's a climate of civil war. Thursday three other shopping areas were invaded by mob in the neighborhoods of Caixa d'Água, Liberdade and Comércio, all in Salvador, which is the capital of Bahia. Shops closed earlier throughout the city.

http://www.brazzilmag.com/component/content/article/107-february-2012/12819-brazil-bahia-is-in-state-of-siege-with-police-on-strike-and-criminals-roaming-streets.html

[Plantagenet]

This kind of thing is why strikes by essential government workers like police, firemen, hospital workers, have been discouraged in US since the police strike of 1919 in Boston.

When the 1919 strike occurred President Woodrow Wilson described the Boston police strike as "a crime against civilization" that left the city "at the mercy of an army of thugs."

[eXpat]

Notice in the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgovk0eaVhE&feature=related
How cars and bikes don´t stop for any reason (If you stop is almost certain you will be robbed), notice the guy in a bike taking a shortcut in the pavement, and groups of thugs checking the doors of shops trying to break in.
You can see here as well in the news robbers breaking in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rZWISezV-c&feature=related

[eXpat]

Looting time!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AccOQh3CZZ0&feature=related
In case you wonder, those people waking both sides of the street with stuff, are not happy shoopers...

[Novus]

Looks pretty orderly to me. No Fires, no dead bodies in the street. The basketball riots in LA were worse than this.

[Pretorian]

Anyone else thinks Brazil had death squads without a reason?