Police Take Slum in Brazil

Anyone catch this article from the Associated Press?

3,000 Brazilian police seize Rio’s biggest slum

More than 3,000 police and soldiers backed by armored personnel carriers raced into Brazil’s biggest slum before dawn Sunday, quickly gaining control of a shantytown ruled for decades by a heavily armed drug gang.

The takeover of the Rocinha neighborhood was the most ambitious operation yet in an effort to increase security before Rio hosts the final matches of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Officials are counting on those events to signal Brazil’s arrival as a global economic, political and cultural power.

Latin America in a Blender?

One of the reasons I love our annual summit conferences is hearing questions from our attendees.

This year, I presented the idea of using emerging markets as a financial survival bunker. I had enough time to answer some great questions from the audience.

None of the countries I talked about in my presentation were in Latin America. A couple people were wondering why I didn’t pick a stable market like Chile, or a growth powerhouse like Brazil. There wasn’t one answer… These two countries are very different.

Chile has been an economic anchor in the best sense of the word. It has handled its balance sheet really well compared to other Latin American countries. In fact, Chile is the only South American country to be a member of the OECD, which it joined in May 2010.

GDP growth has averaged 4% a year since 1999. A major contributor is exports — they make up about 25% of the country’s growth.

But we’re starting to see some trouble in the political sector.