Data and Financial Journalist
In an interview with CNBC, Mohamed El Erian’s thoughts seemed to align with Bill Gross’s statements. “I would have hiked earlier and I would have gotten off zero earlier, but it’s easier to say with hindsight,” El-Erian told CNBC. “We know that there was a moment when domestic data was relatively strong and international data was okay. Now, the international data is really scary, and therefore the Fed has lost the opportunity when it had some alignment.”
The US dollar has been on the rise every day setting high records. With the upward pressure on dollar, stronger dollar could tighten financial conditions across the growth. Further the rising dollar could be offsetting the benefit of low cost oil. Over the past six months, the trade-weighted dollar has risen 25% and faster than anytime the last 40 years. US dollar is a global unit of account in debt contracts and that could be a cause of slow down in the rest of the world. Not only that, if the dollar continues to increase, inflation and US economic could weaken.
With the talks of a New Development Bank in China, BRICS has managed to raise some questions. Will the association of emerging markets manage to create stir in the the global economy or will it be another alliance of economies that just have meetings over nothing. Amidst many criticisms, economies of Brazil and Russia can pose more complication than contribution to the group. But it is definitely too early to completely write off BRICS.
If Brazil has ever suffered from a financial turmoil, it was more of a contagion effect due to 1997 Asian Crisis and 1998 Russian Crisis. It has been considered one of the strongest emerging markets and a large contributor towards global growth. However, things started looking a bit hazy for Brazil since 2008 financial crisis. It was observed that a country that could be a potential contributor to global growth could also pose an equal threat to global financial stability. But before we reach any conclusion for 2014, it is important to look back as to how Brazil evolved as a country and stood strong even when everything around her was in financial turmoil.