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Strategies & Market Trends : Telebras (TBH) & Brazil -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chirodoc who wrote (6832)	8/19/1998 12:43:00 AM
From: Steve Fancy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22640

Brazil's presidential race takes to the airwaves Reuters, Tuesday, August 18, 1998 at 20:18 By William Schomberg BRASILIA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Brazilian presidential candidates took to the airwaves on Tuesday to woo voters in a race widely expected to give President Fernando Henrique Cardoso another four years in office. Across the vast nation, television sets and radios rang to the sounds of upbeat jingles promising more jobs, better public services, less corruption and a "fairer" Brazil as the season of free airtime for candidates began. More than 106 million registered voters can go to the polls on Oct. 4 to choose a new president, state governors, most of Congress and state representatives in Latin America's largest election. While just 10 percent of the population read newspapers, over 90 percent of households have a TV set, making television the central part of any Brazilian election campaign. "It's not enough just to appear on television these days. The decisive issue is who has the most minutes on television," said Muniz Sodre, a communications professor in Rio de Janeiro. Cardoso, for instance, has more than double the airtime of his nearest rival, having constructed an alliance of political parties that gave their allotted airtime to his campaign. The president has cobbled together 23 minutes of airtime per day. Candidates were eligible to buy airtime previously but the media campaigns did not really begin until the free airtime was released on Tuesday. Even before then, Cardoso looked almost certain to win a second term, thanks largely to his popularity in slashing stratospheric inflation. But Cardoso appeared not to be taking any chances in his debut television spot, mixing a celebration of his achievements in power with an admission that he could have done more. "There are lots of things that I would do differently," he said, citing his government's failure to rein in out-of-control public spending through budget reform. In a 10-minute "interview" with a friendly journalist, the president outlined plans to fight record unemployment, defended his government's much-criticized response to a drought earlier this year, and spoke lovingly of his grandchildren. "I am certain we are on the right course," Cardoso concluded as a country music jingle faded in. "I will create a fairer and better country, with less unemployment." A poll published on Tuesday in newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo gave Cardoso 42 percent of the vote while his nearest challenger, leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, had 26 percent. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points. It also showed Cardoso repeating his thumping triumph over Lula in 1994 by winning the October election in the first round by gathering more votes than all his rivals combined. Otherwise, the voting goes to a second round on Oct. 24. Lula avoided direct attacks on Cardoso and appealed to Brazilians' sense of national identity in his televised message. "I have a dream of building a nation where every man and every woman is proud of being Brazilian," said the former trade union leader, looking sharp in a dark suit but sounding just as gruff as when he led factory gate protests in the 1970s against Brazil's military dictatorship. Noticeable by its absence was the revolutionary red of previous campaigns, replaced this time by the green and yellow of Brazil's national flag. Lula has repeatedly accused the media of underestimating his popularity. A young black woman who spoke for most of his program implored his supporters to wear white clothes and tie white ribbons to their cars to prove his support levels were higher than polls showed. "It's time to make the change for a government that has people like us as its priority," the presenter said in an appeal to Brazil's black population, about half of its 160 million people. Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service

To: chirodoc who wrote (6832)	8/19/1998 12:47:00 AM
From: Steve Fancy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22640

Emerging debt ends mixed, eyes remain on Russia Reuters, Tuesday, August 18, 1998 at 20:22 NEW YORK, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Emerging debt ended mixed Monday, as players covering short positions helped raise some Latin American issues while Russian debt languished, traders and analysts said. "We're seeing a technical rebound from yesterday's sell-off, which was pretty severe," one emerging debt trader said. Benchmark Brazil C bonds <BRAZILC=RR> were up 1-5/8 to bid 67, Argentina PAR bonds <ARGPAR=RR> were up 1/2 to bid 71-1/8 and Russian PRIN paper <RUSPRIN=RR> was down 1-1/8 to bid 21-3/4. Market players said they were waiting for details to emerge regarding a planned conversion of Russian short-term debt. Traders said they were hoping for some word Wednesday. "We still don't know either the maturity or the currency denomination of the restructured debt," said Gretchen Rodkey, Eastern European sovereign bond analyst at Bear Stearns & Co. The market had little in the way of news to react to Tuesday. Rather, players said they spent time digesting news from Russia that broke Monday, concerning a 90-day debt moratorium, and a de facto currency devaluation. "It was a day of information gathering," Rodkey said. Deputy Prime Minister Boris Fyodorov, who is responsible for macroeconomics and state debt management, said on Tuesday he thought the government needed advice from foreign banks to carry out the conversion. A spokesman quoted Fyodorov as saying representatives of U.S. investment bank JP Morgan and Germany's Deutsche Bank had already been invited for consultations on the issue. Russia's outstanding MinFin dollar bonds sank again on Tuesday after Monday's sharp decline, as many banks and investors concluded that the securities may be subordinated to the outstanding GKOs, or short-term Russian treasury bills. Prices on MinFin 3 bonds due May, 1999, sank from 70 last Friday to 47 Tuesday as investors dumped the bonds on worry that the securities may not pay principal until all GKO obligations are met, analysts said. Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service