Brazil Is in Real Trouble Now

With a capital T and that rhymes with C and that stands for currency:

The real fell for a second straight session, depreciating 0.5 percent to 2.4243 per U.S. dollar at 1:17 p.m. in Sao Paulo after climbing 0.5 percent earlier today. Swap rates on contracts maturing in January 2015 rose three basis points, or 0.03 percentage point, to 11.72 percent.

Brazil’s currency will decline to 2.47 per dollar at year-end, according to the median of about 100 estimates in a central bank survey published today, compared with the forecast of 2.45 a week ago. Policy makers will raise the target lending rate to 11.88 percent next year, compared with the previous week’s projection of 11.50 percent.

“There is a very high stress regarding emerging markets,” Solange Srour, the chief economist at ARX Investimentos, said in a phone interview from in Rio de Janeiro. “The depreciation of the real should continue and the tendency is to have it between 2.50 and 2.60 by year-end.”

I saw something from Zero Hedge on Twitter earlier today that Mexico too faces similar “external” troubles. C might also stand for “collapse,” as in the emerging markets bubble that’s ready to pop.