Currency Exchange Rate...Booooring

I wish I had paid more attention to boring things like monetary policy and economics in general. Not that I´d necessarily feel any more comfortable with the current state of things than I do now, but it might feel like a more educated insecurity, or even a more educated panic.

Like almost everyone else, I imagine, Heitor and I are wrestling with the uncertainties of the US economy. In our case, we are specifically concerned with the value of the US dollar vs. the Brasilean Real and where it is likely to go.

When I first came to Brasil in late 2005, the exchange rate was about R$2.00 = $1.00. On future trips the dollar was a little weaker, but it still bought about 1.9 Reals. I just checked the historical daily exchange rates from July 1, 2008 to today. In that one single year, the rate has swung all the way from R$1.5 to $1.00 all the way to R$2.44 to $1.00 (and about every point in between). For the last couple of weeks it has been about R$1.89 to $1.00.

As dramatic as that one-year range seems, every Brasilean can remember a point in the mid-1990s when the two currencies traded at R$1.00 to $1.00. And as recently as when Lula was first elected in late 2002, the capitalist world panicked and the rate went to R$4 to $1. Both of these extremes are considered by Brasileans to have been semi-disastrous, and there has been a lot of talk recently by government officials and economists about how Brasil would like to see the rate remain at roughly R$2 to $1. But it is a floating exchange rate and, while government monetary policies can apparently have an influence on the rate, they don´t dictate it.

So....can anybody tell me where it will be 6 months from now? Please? Imagine trying to budget for a larger apartment, with a two (or more)-year lease and dealing with such uncertainties.

Is anyone else struck by the irony that the US economy is being propped up by the Chinese, and that, when they lose confidence, we´re something like sunk? Forty years ago we were still refusing to recognize the existence of China, and now our capitalist system can´t exist without them.

Miscellany

Ok, I´ve got to revert to writing about Brasilean oddities and cultural differences. I don´t think I´ve ever mentioned that the grocery stores do not sell milk in their refrigerated dairy sections. Virtually all of the milk that is sold here is UHT-treated (ultra high temperature) and doesn´t require refrigeration before it is opened. Some stores have the milk in plastic containers that are shaped like an old-fashioned milk bottle, but most of the milk by far is sold in boxes. My very unsophisticated, or possibly deadened-over-time, palate can´t detect a difference, although I have read on the internet that some people do feel the high temperature alters the taste.

Heitor and I live in the center of São Paulo, and any morning when I happen to be awake between about 5 and 6 a.m. I am serenaded by a rooster somewhere in the vicinity. I don´t think it is close enough and loud enough to actually wake me (it certainly never wakes Heitor) but, if I happen to be awake, I hear this bird. Heitor has never heard it, but I do know what a rooster sounds like and I hear him without fail if I am awake early. My only conclusion is that someone is keeping him on the roof of one of the apartment buildings. There is a little store in my block that has a parrot who wolf whistles at passersby all day long, but I think that is the extent of his vocabulary, and that store isn´t open at such early hours. And would he be smart enough to imitate a rooster at dawn and a lecherous Brasilean the rest of the day?

The reaction to Obama´s statement about the Cambridge police having acted stupidly was perfectly predictable and totally frustrating. As Jon Stewart pointed out, Obama´s statement was...how should Jon say it?...stupid, because he should have foreseen the reaction to it. And he had already said he didn´t have all of the facts in the matter. But it seems to me that what he said was completely true. If the Cambridge police arrest a man in his own home and drop all charges the following day (or day after?), isn´t that a tacit admission that the arrest was a mistake? I know that all mistakes are not stupid, but I think this one was.

This has nothing to do with what Professor Gates may or may not have said to aggrevate the situation. My first thought, after all, was that Gates should have been pleased to have alert neighbors who got involved and called the police when they saw something suspicious. But a later thought was that his gratitude to his neighbors has nothing at all to do with his reaction to the behaviour of the police.

It has been a pet peeve of mine for at least 40 years that the police do not accept responsibility for their mistakes, and that their normal overreaction to verbal abuse of themselves or to any questioning of their actions is part and parcel of their us-versus-them mindset. We are always reminded that theirs is a dangerous profession, and that they are only human, both of which are valid considerations. But we also have a right to expect that the police behave as the public servants that they are. A request for an officer´s badge number is always legitimate. In fact the refusal to honor that request, or even to treat it as an aggressive act, seems like an admission on the part of the police that they are acting in error. If an officer is in the right and knows it, why wouldn´t he proudly offer up his badge number? And how can police unions anywhere think they still have any credibility at all when the only reaction they know is a kneejerk defense of their members in any and all situations. Have you ever known a police union to act differently?

Finally, I don´t understand how an officer in Cambridge, Massachusetts who apparently prides himself on his racial sensitivity doesn´t recognize Henry Louis Gates in this situation. I think I´d recognize him if I ran into him on the street in São Paulo, unless his cane threw me. But I sure as hell would have recognized him from his Harvard ID card.

Tchau

Holidays, God Bless ém

For about as long as I´ve been here, I have been meaning to add up the number of holidays that Brasileans celebrate every year, because it has always seemed to me that they have a lot of them.

Officially there appear to be 11 national holidays, four of which are distinctly religious (Good Friday, Corpus Christi, Our Lady of Aperecida, and All Souls Day), or five, if you want to insist Christmas is still a religious holiday, the case for which may be stronger in Brasil than in the US.

But this number doesn´t tell the whole story. For example, Carnaval Monday is a national holiday but, in reality, the following Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday) and Wednesday (Ash Wednesday) are also holidays. I remember how deserted the city was for those three days this year and how one friend and I had to rearrange a lunch schedule to find a restaurant that was going to be open on Tuesday.

These 11 days are augmented by additonal holidays that are specific to a state or city. There are at least 2 days that are celebrated only in the state of São Paulo.

Finally, it appears that mid-week holidays frequently spill over into other days. Corpus Christi day was on July 9th this year, which was a Thursday. For all practical porpoises, it was a 4-day holiday except for the unlucky people in retail jobs.

And there was another mysterious Thursday holiday in mid to late June which I can´t find on any of the internet lists. I remember it because Thursday is one of my assigned days at the gym, and there have already been two Thursdays since my membership started in June when it was closed for a holiday.

I can see that there have been legislative attempts at the national level to move mid-week holidays to either Monday or Friday, but I have no idea how likely that is to occur. I know I wouldn´t bet on it. And I hope it doesn´t happen. Life is too short to always organize it around ideas of sound business efficiency or similar practical concerns. The whole world need not emulate the Yankee model.

It is more interesting to me, at least.

As I said in the header, I want to change this space. At least I think it will be more interesting to me.

For one thing, I have now posted links to some of the blogs I have been reading irregularly for the past few months, and to which I want to pay a bit more attention. Since I know I have more time than many of you, especially if you´re still a poor working stiff, I may occasionally point out certain things which I think are particularly noteworthy. For instance, I encourage you to go the Andrew Sullivan blog and go down (quite a ways) until you come to his post about the Iranian movie "Ten." It just might send you to Netflix to see if it´s available. I don´t have to do that, because Heitor owns the film. :-) In general, I think Brasileans who are interested in film, have a much broader knowledge than their counterparts in the US, which makes sense because they don´t have so many national films of their own to command their attention.

Is this a bit absurd or what....sitting here in São Paulo watching the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Sotomayor nomination (streamed live at the NY Times website) and seeing Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, Jr twang his concerns lest Judge Sotomayor be biased and unfair in her approach to the business of judging, lest her sensitivity and awareness of her life experiences as a latino woman precludes her ability to be as "objective" as any other judge.

But according to Michelle Malkin (see how open-minded I am?) Senator Kennedy "attempted to paint Alito as hostile to women, while maintaining a membership at a club that bans women from membership." The whole process always seems like the old west requirement to "give him a fair trial and then hang him." Everyone knows that Sotomayor is going to be confirmed, just like we knew that about Roberts and Alito, but we need to let the other side do their best to make some points, if not change some minds. Roberts and Alito turned out to be the kinds of judges the Democrats predicted. I only hope that Sotomayor fulfills the worst fears of the Republicans.

Next time....how many holidays to Brasileans actually get in a year? Spoiler alert: a lot!

Why I Have So Many Freaking Colds

Sometimes I am so slow on the uptake that it´s mind boggling. I am currently dealing with the probable onset of a new head cold before I´ve really even recovered from the last one. I have all the usual symptoms, which for me are a sore throat and sneezing. That is more information than is necessary for my purposes here, but maybe I just want a little sympathy, ok?

Every time I´ve had a new cold down here, I´ve wondered what the hell is going on. I never had very many colds in the US, so why so many here, in what is supposed to be a tropical freaking paradise?

Well, today the lightbulb finally lit up on my way home from meeting my Português tutor. The answer, of course, is the subway and the buses. Almost every day I am confined with dozens of other people and get to share all of their delightful germs...the downside to ogling all of their delightful bodies. Finally, I´ve found a rationale for the suburban car culture that defines the US. That particular way of life may be contributing to global warming and to wars for access to oil, but at least it is limiting individual access to the germs that spread the common cold.

What I sacrifice every day for the common good!!