BRIC? not really; MINT

BRICs remember that?
Ten years ago Wall street pundits argued that Brazil had everything going for itself. Talks of becoming a developed country were published daily. It was its industry, manufacturing, tourism, internal demand, raw materials, food production... what could wrong?

Mexico...  well it was doomed... China made Mexico irrelevant.

look at this table

Greenfield FDI investments by country in $M
YEAR	Brazil	Mexico
2005	24,092	3,431
2006	4,357	9,743
2007	10,926	6,472
2008	27,958	21,463
2009	13,309	15,536
2010	25,355	10,412
2011	24,823	13,272
2012	13,809	9,253
2013	9,330	13,728
2014	5,917	16,025
2015	2,025	8,113
Total	161,901	127,548

Now nobody talks about BRICs in fact we talk MINT

Mexico
Indonesia
Nigeria
Turkey

Cool... for how long?

A brand new FX world

I used to teach (even this morning, 8/20/2015) that a devaluation was a good way for countries to increase their exports and get out of debt...

I guess it is still true, however... (a big one)...

Our supply chains are now so interconnected that depend on a group of currencies. Only a portion of any good is made in one country. Much of many products is simply transportation.

In this line, a new study from the World Bank concludes:

"Intuitively, as countries are
more integrated in global production processes, a currency
depreciation only improves the competitiveness of a fraction
of the value of final goods exports. "

The authors claim that depreciations are only 1/2 as effective as they were 20 years ago.