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November 9, 2005
TheConMan: Brazilian Real is strong on the Soybean exports to China. The biggest export to the US from latin America is Cocaine. The high US demand for Cocaine is destroying Latin America.
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SouthAmerica: Not only Soybean â iron ore, orange juice, coffee, sugar cane, beef, airplanes, and much moreâ¦
In contrast, the biggest imports to the US from the other South American countries are: cocaine, cocaine, and cocaine. (That doesnât say much about the state of American society â other than the US has a lot of junkies.)
On a daily basis, there is a lane of ships all across the ocean coming from China to the US â that is what airline pilots report that they can see from the air when they fly from the US to Asia. These ships come loaded with all kinds of stuff to sell in the US market â but on their return trip to China, 90 percent of these ships are empty â and the ones that have cargo from the US is loaded with scrap metal for recycling.
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Pabst: Perhaps the strength of the Brazilian economy will encourage SA and other socialist agitators to repatriate themselves by emigrating out of the U.S.
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SouthAmerica: I know a lot of Brazilians who used to live here in the New York Metropolitan area, but after living here in the US for 10, 20 years, and even longer all these people packed their belongings and returned home. (Because things are getting better in Brazil than around here.)
In 1988 when I was a controller for a major Brazilian international trading company in New Jersey, (our office was located right next to the George Washington Bridge that connects New Jersey with New York City) our outside auditors had twenty-two other Brazilian companies as their clients in the New York metropolitan area. By the year 2000 that same auditing firm had only one Brazilian client left in the New York City Metropolitan area â a small office of Petrobras.
The Petrobras Company (a major company in Brazil) was one of their major Brazilian clients at the time in New York City. In 1986 Petrobras had over 100 people working on its office in New York City. Today they have about three people working in that office. Most of the other twenty-two Brazilian company clients of our outside auditors closed their offices in New York City, and they no longer operate in the United States.
During the years 1986 and 2000 when I was working in companies doing international trade, I saw first hand a number of Brazilian companies one by one going out of business and closing its US operations â not only international trading companies but also Brazilian banks, shipping companies and so onâ¦.
There were other factors that merged during that time that also helped explain for this amazing exodus of Brazilian companies from the US market such as: economic turmoil in Brazil, merger and acquisitions among Brazilian companies, innovation and technological advances during that time made many of these companies obsolete, and since 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union Americans lost its interest in Brazil and Latin America in general, and American attention shifted to other parts of the world.
Basically, today the United States is becoming irrelevant from the Brazilian perspective. I know for a fact that Americans are losing their grasp on what is going in many areas around the world, but the US is especially losing very fast its influence in South America. For a number of years now, in foreign policy the US has been looking like amateurs.
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TheConMan: The brains are leaving quietly. You don't have to tell them, they are smarter than you are. (Reply to Pabst)
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SouthAmerica: For the last 50 years the United States attracted the brainpower from around the world â to work and help American companies develop all kinds of things â from pharmaceuticals, to high tech, and so onâ¦
Today, in the age of the internet â these brainpower can stay and work on their countries and they still can participate on the global economy. The US no longer has the monopoly on the worldâs brainpower.
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maxpi: I think the Chinese are pretty xenophobic and will not attract anybody but fellow Chinese so maybe the US will get tired of training them to overtake usâ¦
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SouthAmerica: In general Americans have a very narrow mind about a lot things that is happening around the world â and they base their narrow thinking on old messages of a world long gone.
A lot of Americans look at China as if todayâs China still was Maoâs China.
I have good news for you â The communists are not coming to get you!!!
Todayâs China is an awesome âCapitalistâ machine. And the Chinese is beating the United States in a big way on its own capitalist games.
The capitalism that is growing at leaps and bounds in China today â is a type and scale of capitalism never seen before in world history.
China is no Japan for sure. The Japanese capitalism were limited by a small population of 100 million people, in the other hand Chinese capitalism is in the other extreme with a potential population of 1.5 billion people in a few years.
The other major difference between Japan and China â you can read about how smart the Chinese are on this message board on the thread "The China Price" and the Chinese are not only found in Mainland China, but also in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and other places around the world.
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Burtakus: Without the US putting money into China, China would go under.
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SouthAmerica: I would not bet on that. But the other way around â could cause a lot of hardship to the US economy.
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