How the full opening of the capital account to highly liquid financial markets led Latin America to two and a half cycles of ‘mania, panic and crash’

Latin America has recently experienced three cycles of capital inflows, the first two ending in major financial crises. The first took place between 1973 and the 1982 ‘debt-crisis’. The second took place between the 1989 ‘Brady bonds’ agreement (and the beginning of the economic reforms and financial liberalisation that followed) and the Argentinian 2001/2002 crisis, and ended up with four major crises (as well as the 1997 one in East Asia) — Mexico (1994), Brazil (1999), and two in Argentina (1995 and 2001/2). Finally, the third inflow-cycle began in 2003 as soon as international financial markets felt reassured by the surprisingly neo-liberal orientation of President Lula’s government; this cycle intensified in 2004 with the beginning of a (purely speculative) commodity price-boom, and actually strengthened after a brief interlude following the 2008 global financial crash — and at the time of writing (mid-2011) this cycle is still unfolding, although already showing considerable signs of distress. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the financial crises resulting from this second cycle (both in LA and in East Asia) from the perspective of Keynesian/ Minskyian/ Kindlebergian financial economics. I will attempt to show that no matter how diversely these newly financially liberalised Developing Countries tried to deal with the absorption problem created by the subsequent surges of inflow (and they did follow different routes), they invariably ended up in a major crisis. As a result (and despite the insistence of mainstream analysis), these financial crises took place mostly due to factors that were intrinsic (or inherent) to the workings of over-liquid and under-regulated financial markets — and as such, they were both fully deserved and fairly predictable. Furthermore, these crises point not just to major market failures, but to a systemic market failure: evidence suggests that these crises were the spontaneous outcome of actions by utility-maximising agents, freely operating in friendly (light-touched) regulated, over-liquid financial markets. That is, these crises are clear examples that financial markets can be driven by buyers who take little notice of underlying values — investors have incentives to interpret information in a biased fashion in a systematic way. ‘Fat tails’ also occurred because under these circumstances there is a high likelihood of self-made disastrous events. In other words, markets are not always right — indeed, in the case of financial markets they can be seriously wrong as a whole. Also, as the recent collapse of ‘MF Global’ indicates, the capacity of ‘utility-maximising’ agents operating in unregulated and over-liquid financial market to learn from previous mistakes seems rather limited.

Análise das condicionantes para a escolha do tipo societário: sociedades por ações de capital fechado e sociedades limitadas

O presente trabalho dedica-se a analisar as peculiaridades dos tipos societários das sociedades anônimas de capital fechado e das sociedades limitadas, verificando as distinções relevantes entre cada tipo. Com isso, espera-se contribuir para o entendimento de cada tipo em uma análise comparativa, fornecendo subsídios para uma escolha do tipo societário mais apropriado para cada caso. A análise realizada passa por diversas peculiaridades inerentes a cada tipo, bem como por casos em que institutos típicos de um dos tipos possam ser importados ao outro tipo societário. Não há uma análise qualitativa a respeito de cada tipo, tampouco qualquer recomendação a respeito. Em linhas gerais, verifica-se que as sociedades limitadas possuem uma estrutura mais simples do que a das sociedades por ações, embora haja hipóteses em que os mecanismos típicos das sociedades anônimas tenham maior agilidade em relação à sociedade limitada. Com isso, para cada situação específica, um ou outro tipo pode se configurar como o mais adequado. Este trabalho pretende fornecer elementos que permitam identificar com clareza a adequação do tipo mais indicado ao caso concreto.

Sociedades e estratégias empresariais nos sectores agro-industriais do vinho e cana sacarina na Madeira (1870-1930)

Universidade da Madeira

Antropofagia ritual e identidade cultural nas sociedades ameríndias: a representação do "Outro" na literatura brasileira e portuguesa do século XIX

Universidade da Madeira

Intervenção judicial nas sociedades limitadas em face da liberdade de iniciativa

The judicial intervention in limited liability company goes through several issues of legislative and hermeneutics origin, based considerably on the small importance given to freedom of economic initiative by the participants in the process of formation and application of the law. In addition, Brazilian law, due to incompleteness, inconsistency or lack of valid grounds, put the judge in a procedural delicate situation. Being forced to judge, the judiciary faces severe uncomfortable interpretive situations, of which derive solutions of dubious constitutionality and affecting, significantly, the dynamics of business activity. In this context, and considering the limited liability company as an expression of free enterprise, corresponding to a lawful association of people in order to undertake economically, in exercise of his freedom of contracting and professional action, intended to be offered safe parameters of constitutionality for judicial intervention in limited liability company in the hypothesis of (i) transfer of corporate shares, (ii) attachment of corporate shares, (iii) dismissal of directors, (iv) appointment of judicial stakeholders, (v) exclusion of shareholders and (vi ) trespass. The hypothetical-deductive approach was adopted, building hypotheses to overcome the gaps and unconstitutionality of the law and subjecting them to tests, reviews, and comparisons with hypothetical facts and case law in order to determine the constitutional validity of the proposed solutions. The procedure aimed to reconcile the historical, comparative, dialectical and scientific methods. The roots of temporal institutes were researched as well as current solutions provided by national and compared law. From problematizations point, addressed by the constitutional interpretation of the law and jurisprudence, responses that bring out the unconstitutionality of certain conceptions were headed

Strategies to promote farm animal welfare in Latin America and their effects on carcass and meat quality traits

Several initiatives, including research and development, increasing stakeholders' awareness and application of legislation and recommendation, have been carried out in Latin America to promote animal welfare and meat quality. Most activities focused on the impact of pre-slaughter conditions (facilities, equipment and handling procedures) on animal welfare and meat quality. The results are encouraging; data from Brazil, Chile and Uruguay showed that the application of the improved pre-slaughter handling practices reduced aggressive handling and the incidence of bruised carcasses at slaughter in cattle and pigs. These outcomes stimulated some to apply animal welfare concepts in livestock handling within the meat production chain as shown by the increasing demand for personnel training on the best. To attend this demand is important to expand local studies on farm animal welfare and to set up (or maintain) an efficient system for knowledge transfer to all stakeholders in the Latin America meat production chains. However, it is clear that to promote the long-term progress in this field is important to deliver practical solutions, assuring that they match the technical and financial conditions of those who are the target of training programs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Non invasive methods for genetic analysis applied to ecological and behavioral studies in Latino-America

Documenting the presence and abundance of the neotropical mammals is the first step for understanding their population ecology, behavior and genetic dynamics in designing conservation plans. The combination of field research with molecular genetics techniques are new tools that provide valuable biological information avoiding the disturbance in the ecosystems, trying to minimize the human impact in the process to gather biological information. The objective of this paper is to review the available non invasive sampling techniques that have been used in Neotropical mammal studies to apply to determine the presence and abundance, population structure, sex ratio, taxonomic diagnostic using mitochondrial markers, and assessing genetic variability using nuclear markers. There are a wide range of non invasive sampling techniques used to determine the species identification that inhabit an area such as searching for tracks, feces, and carcasses. Other useful equipment is the camera traps that can generate an image bank that can be valuable to assess species presence and abundance by morphology. With recent advances in molecular biology, it is now possible to use the trace amounts of DNA in feces and amplify it to analyze the species diversity in an area, and the genetic variability at intraspecific level. This is particularly helpful in cases of sympatric and cryptic species in which morphology failed to diagnose the taxonomic status of several species of brocket deer of the genus Mazama.

DNA bar-coding reveals source and patterns of Thaumastocoris peregrinus invasions in South Africa and South America

Thaumastocoris peregrinus is a recently introduced invertebrate pest of non-native Eucalyptus plantations in the Southern Hemisphere. It was first reported from South Africa in 2003 and in Argentina in 2005. Since then, populations have grown explosively and it has attained an almost ubiquitous distribution over several regions in South Africa on 26 Eucalyptus species. Here we address three key questions regarding this invasion, namely whether only one species has been introduced, whether there were single or multiple introductions into South Africa and South America and what the source of the introduction might have been. To answer these questions, bar-coding using mitochondrial DNA (COI) sequence diversity was used to characterise the populations of this insect from Australia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Uruguay. Analyses revealed three cryptic species in Australia, of which only T. peregrinus is represented in South Africa and South America. Thaumastocoris peregrinus populations contained eight haplotypes, with a pairwise nucleotide distance of 0.2-0.9% from seventeen locations in Australia. Three of these haplotypes are shared with populations in South America and South Africa, but the latter regions do not share haplotypes. These data, together with the current distribution of the haplotypes and the known direction of original spread in these regions, suggest that at least three distinct introductions of the insect occurred in South Africa and South America before 2005. The two most common haplotypes in Sydney, one of which was also found in Brisbane, are shared with the non-native regions. Sydney populations of T. peregrinus, which have regularly reached outbreak levels in recent years, might thus have served as source of these three distinct introductions into other regions of the Southern Hemisphere.

The historiographic Hispano-Americanism: Spain and America in the perspective of Ricardo Levene and Rafael Altamira

This article analyzes how Latin American history was interpreted by two eminent historians, the Argentine Ricardo Levene and the Spaniard Rafael Altamira. It discusses how their paths crossed in the advocacy of Hispano-Americanism as a political project and interpretive horizon of Iberian and American history.

Relações entre mídia e lazer:o capitalismo, os meios e a apropriação do tempo livre nas sociedades industrial e pós-industrial

This research aims to understand the relationship between media, capitalism and ownership of free time for leisure practices in industrial societies and postindustrial. Searching is thus a conceptual framework that takes into account the kind of ideology that naturalizes the relationship of leisure with the foundations of contemporary media, and the media only with leisure, forgetting their insertion in the labor and industrial relations in society. We intend to demonstrate that every mode of production, in the capitalist system, entails a mode of reproduction. Methodologically, this is a first approximation, from theoretical concerns already performed, constituting a theoretical research, bibliographic and descriptive character. The results of the text drives us to the conclusion that the work and leisure spheres tend to be less and less differentiated, since both remain as activities of product management with the same intellective protocols, based on information and communication technology, and that accordingly, the media favors an expansion of productive activity even during leisure time