In Country: Global Economic Downturn Effects Brasil Too

In the past two months, Brasil has lost 750,000 jobs as a result of the global economic crisis. And these are just the "formal" jobs registered with the federal government. Since many millions of people in Brasil work in unregistered jobs, we will never know the real impact of the economic slowdown. Informal jobs include street vendors selling pirated DVDs, beer, fruit and vegetables, and myriad other economic transactions that the government does not know about and views as illegal. While many here in Brasil don't even realize there is a global crisis (probably because life was hard even when the rich were flush with cash), the cloud gathering overhead suggests worse times are on the horizon.