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March 2007
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Members : 17360
Content : 3757
Content View Hits : 29521333
Content : 3757
Content View Hits : 29521333
Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's arrival in Washington tonight, March 30, is surrounded by high expectations, but also with considerable trepidation. President Lula will be President Bush's guest at Camp David, his presidential refuge in the nearby Maryland mountains, just outside of Washington. 
The number of Brazilian companies that opened their capital between 2004 and March this year has reached 50. It is a very expressive datum, given the fact that very few processes of this type happened in previous years: there was just one a year in 2000, 2001 and 2002 and none in 2003. 
Lula's upcoming March 31 trip to Washington may represent little more than a demonstration of courtesy and a good natured desire to help a host serving out a stricken presidency. Lula will also be called upon to make small genuflections to assuage Washington's energy security concerns, which all of a sudden have become terribly important to the Bush Administration. 
Despite the surprises and resentments related to the Brazilian cabinet reform, the subject in Congress, yesterday, was president Lula's meeting with the economic team to celebrate the IBGE's (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) "new methodology," a little odd miracle that put Brazil in the position of world's tenth largest economy thanks to a magic trick that took out of the government's hat a boost for last year's Gross Domestic Product plus a supposed increase for this year's GDP. 
"I have never acknowledged the difference between 'serious' music and 'light' music. There is only good music and bad music...the great classical composers wrote for their contemporary audiences. They wanted those who heard their music to understand it, and they did."