Luciana Lima Reporter Agência Brasil
Brasília – During the meeting yesterday at the White House with the president of the United States, Barack Obama, president Dilma Rousseff once again complained that the use of monetary expansion, also known as quantitative easing, by the US and other rich nations as a tool to get them out of the Great Recession, was having a negative effect on the international economy. Dilma pointed out that the easy money policies [and near zero interest rates] caused devaluation of currencies, especially the dollar, making economic development in emerging nations more difficult. In the past, Dilma called the flood of cheap dollars rushing into Brazil (where interest rates are much higher) a “monetary tsunami.”
Speaking at the White House yesterday, Dilma said: “We told president Obama of Brazil’s concern with this monetary expansion where countries with surpluses do not balance their currency expansion with fiscal policies based on the expansion of investments. These monetary policy decisions made by individual countries within the context of fiscal policies, result in currency devaluation in rich nations that compromise [economic development] in emerging nations.”
Obama responded that, in the medium term, economic growth in the United States was positive for the world economy even though in the short term it could be less so for the BRICS – the group of countries consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. “The BRICS represent an expressive part of the world economy, but it is important to perceive that world economic growth will be benefited by expressive growth in the US, … growth that will have an important role in overcoming the crisis and a return to prosperity,” declared Obama.
In other comments, Dilma emphasized the achievement of closer ties with the US in energy generation and, of great strategic importance to Brazil, the development of technology. Dilma added that partnership ventures in these areas will probably include gas and petroleum exploration in the future. “We have existing areas of strategic cooperation, areas we can expand and deepen, such as energy. We have enormous room for cooperation in gas and petroleum that ranges from equipment and services to commercial relations. …We are partners, as well, in the area of biofuels. I want to acknowledge the recent reduction of trade barriers in the US that favor Brazilian [sugarcane-based] ethanol. And I want to put special emphasis on another huge area of cooperation, energy efficiency, something I know is very dear to president Obama.”
Finally, Dilma thanked the US for its participation in the Science Without Borders (“Ciência sem Fronteiras”) a program that aims to send 100,000 Brazilian students, professionals and researchers abroad on scholarships. “We want to publicly thank the US for participating in Science Without Borders and accepting Brazilian students and researchers who will come here to set up partnerships with American universities. We welcome this support,” she declared.
Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English
Link - Dilma volta a reclamar da desvalorização de moedas em encontro com Obama
