Bidding up Brazil

Brazilians are waiting nervously to see what the world has in store for their fragile economy, but have already done a lot to make their country stronger

VIEWED from a height of 600 metres, it is hard to see how Brazil could ever be poor. Flying in a small plane from Sao Paulo in the south to Bahia in the north, black clouds thick with rain give way to a hot sun, revealing hundreds of green rectangles of sugar cane and circles of coffee below. Further west lie giant areas of pasture for cattle and plains of soyabeans. To the other side, out to sea, a vast oilfield was recently discovered (see box on next page). Beneath the earth lie large deposits of ...