[LINK] "For Brazilians in Manhattan, Window-Shopping Is Now All the Rage"

[rfmcdonald]

One consequence of the slide of the Brazilian real versus the American dollar, as depicted by Bloomberg's Julia Leite and Paula Sambo, is a crimp placed on tourist budgets in New York City. Other world currencies, including the Canadian dollar, are experiencing comparable declines, too.

Walking out of the B&H store in midtown Manhattan this past weekend, Tabata Bandez said she had been nervously tracking the real’s drop during her eight-day trip and scrapped plans to buy a computer to bring back to Rio de Janeiro. A few days earlier, the Gaiao family was taking plenty of pictures in front of Rockefeller Center but doing little shopping. And at the Apple store on Fifth Avenue, Claudia Tavares decided to get her stepson’s iPhone fixed instead of paying up for a new model.

“You have to do the math and see if it’s worth it,” Tavares, 51, said while waiting in line. The day after arriving from Brazil, she and her friend, who are staying in a short-term apartment rental with their daughters after finding hotels too expensive, went to Target to stock up on food. That was some of the only shopping they planned to do, she said.

Even before the real fell another 15 percent against the dollar this year -- part of a two-year, 36 percent tumble that sent it to a 12-year low last week -- Brazilians were already paring back their spending on overseas trips. In the fourth quarter, they spent 8 percent less than they did a year earlier, the biggest drop for any quarter since 2009.

More declines may be looming. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicts the real could fall another 10 percent in the next 12 months, while Standard Chartered Bank says the currency could tumble another 15 percent by year-end as President Dilma Rousseff struggles to shore up a sputtering economy and bolster investor confidence in her government’s finances while quelling street protests triggered by a widening corruption scandal.