BRASIL: State Bank Feeds Credit Boom...While Fighting Inflation And Raising The Benchmark.

WSJ / P. Prada / An excellent primer on state-owned BNDES bank
Free front page link

Brasil's National Development Bank/BNDES is spurring the economy with interest rates... as low as 6% for big businesses...even while it's central bank...has just raised the benchmark rate...for the 4th time in 2011...to 12.25%...one of the highest in the world.

"The government is trying to heat and cool the economy at the same time," said an economist. "Monetary officials have few options but to remain strict when the government keeps pouring money into vehicles like the BNDES."

The housing market is under assault by speculators...with double-digit increases in Rio and other cities...while rice and beans have almost doubled in price in three years.
 The currency...the REAL has increased 40% vs usd...in just two years.

BRASIL: Profiling Rousseff's Economic Advisor: Luciano Coutinho.

BLOOMBERG/ Matthew Bristow and Joshua Goodman /
     Some financial analysts are betting that Luciano Coutinho, 64, Dilma Rousseff’s economics professor at Campinas University, will become one of her top policy advisers, possibly finance minister, when she takes office in January. Since 2007, Coutinho has headed the Rio-based bank known as BNDES.
   Here's a link to a profile of Coutinho and his economic policies.
  Apparently, Coutinho belongs to the “developmentalist” school of economics that pushed for high tariffs and state-led investment in the 1970s to boost Brazil’s industrial capacity.

BRASIL: Rousseff To Retain Lulu's Key Policymakers.

REUTERS/

High government sources report that Dilma Rousseff will retain an economic team that known to investors if elected president in October, including Finance Minister Guido Mantega, one of Lula's closest confidants; the president of state development bank BNDES Luciano Coutinho; and Petrobras chief executive Jose Sergio Gabrielli.