Dollar Overwhelms Central Banks From Brazil to Korea (Update1) - Bloomberg.com

By Oliver Biggadike and Matthew Brown

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil, South Korea and Russia are losing the battle among developing nations to reduce gains in their currencies and keep exports competitive as the demand for their financial assets, driven by the slumping dollar, is proving more than central banks can handle."...

‘Suffered Tremendously’
Brazil’s real is up 1.6 percent this month, even after imposing a tax in October on foreign stock and bond investments and increasing foreign reserves by $9.5 billion in October in an effort to curb the currency’s appreciation. The real has risen 33 percent this year.
“We have to be careful that our exchange rate doesn’t appreciate too much as to deindustrialize the country,” Marcos Verissimo, chief of staff at Brazil’s state development bank known as BNDES, said yesterday at a conference in Sao Paulo. “The capital goods industry has suffered tremendously.”....

“The dollar is weakening because the U.S. has the lowest short-term interest rates in the world will be the sell side of the carry trade as long as that remains true,” Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York, wrote in a note to clients yesterday.....

‘Hard to Fight’

Brazil’s economy emerged from a recession in the second quarter, swinging to a 1.9 percent expansion after six months of contraction, a Sept. 11 report from the statistics agency showed. Six straight months of job growth, coupled with tax breaks and record low borrowing costs, pushed up consumer spending and helped Latin America’s largest economy rebound from the global financial crisis.

“I hear a lot of noise reflecting the government’s discomfort with the exchange rate, but it is hard to fight this,” said Rodrigo Azevedo, the monetary policy director of Brazil’s central bank from 2004 to 2007. “There is very little Brazil can do,” said Azevedo, who runs $1.8 billion at JGP SA in Rio de Janeiro, in an Oct. 16 interview.

To contact the reporter on this story:  
Oliver Biggadike in New York at obiggadike@bloomberg.net
 Matthew Brown in London at brown42@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: November 13, 2009 01:34 EST
Dollar Overwhelms Central Banks From Brazil to Korea

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