Betting On Brazil

Why Liberalism Is Dying?

Liberalism has dwindled as a political force over the last one hundred years, partly because it won many of its battles.

The fall of the Berlin wall, free trade, free speech through the Internet, lower marginal taxes.

But it has not offered solutions to the growth of organized crime, the loss of moral and family values, the destruction of the middle class, the deterioration of education, terrorism, the growth of mediocrity rather than meritocracy.

Conservatism has occupied the political space left by the liberals.

Liberalism has restricted itself in denouncing encroachments of freedom with more of the same arguments used 200 hundred years ago.

Rather than belabor what went wrong, I would like to propose a future agenda, which by itself will give an idea of what went wrong.

Liberalism greatest mission is to point to society not the encroachments on liberty, but to point out the growth of social free riding, call it kleptocracy, social parasitism, organized crime, government.

In every society, some members will take upon themselves an evolutionary strategy of living off the work of others.

Evaluating NGO Risk and Performance Through Credit Scoring

 

Which are the best run charities and NGOs in America?

Which are the best run NGOs in the world?

Which are the charitable organizations that really deserve to receive our donations?

Which are the NGOs that will make the best use of our money?

These are the most pressing questions in Philanthropy, and it is the first question any potential philanthropist asks himself and experts of their immediate acquaintances.

Unfortunately there is hardly an objective, technical and well sustained answer.

The benchmarks generally used to evaluate for-profit organizations are not suitable for NGOs.

Brazil: A Hungry Planet and Brazilian Agriculture. Now What ?

Serra or Dilma? Who Would Be Best For Brazil?

This is the most frequent question I receive from investors these days. 

Both candidates are expert government administrators, tough, hardly charismatic, but know their ropes around bureaucratic government.

Government bureaucracy is definitely one of our bottlenecks, and both candidates will do an excellent job in putting government to work. In fact that is what both are doing know, Dilma as Chief of Staff, and Serra as Governor of São Paulo.

Lula was more easy going, and would rather make friends than enemies. Serra and Dilma are more like hatchet men, not afraid of making enemies to get things done.

Consumer Sales 10% Growth in 2009

These figure do not include 2009 Xmas, so final numbers should be better still.