Brazilian police have arrested more than 30 tourism officials and business leaders, including Deputy Tourism Minister Frederico Silva da Costa. They are accused of conspiring to divert public money for private gain, charges they deny.Almost 200 police took part in the operation to detain the suspects.Mr Costa is the third high-ranking official caught up in corruption allegations since President Dilma Rousseff took office in January.Prosecutors said the suspects had awarded contracts at inflated prices to complicit firms that often were not qualified to carry out the work.Arrests warrants were issued for 38 people and by late Tuesday, 35 were in custody, Brazilian media reported. The officials were arrested in the cities of Brasilia, Sao Paulo and Macapa. The arrests come in the wake of allegations of corruption at the ministries of agriculture and transport.

The Federal Reserve meets Tuesday with brush fires burning all around it and little water left in its tank.Monday's dizzying stock market dive has heightened speculation that the Fed could take steps to ease market jitters that some fear could help topple a teetering economy into recession. The recovery is already sputtering amid weakening manufacturing activity, sluggish retail sales and European debt woes. "I'm looking for (the central bank) certainly to do something," says Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist of IHS Global Insight.Yet Gault, like many economists, says any move likely would involve a largely symbolic change in the language of its policy statement, rather than another big purchase of Treasury bonds aimed at lowering interest rates. And Conrad DeQuadros of RDQ Economics notes the Fed's mission is to keep inflation and unemployment low — not to respond to stock market gyrations.

Investors the world over are still reeling from last Thursday's massive plunge in the US equity markets, in which the major indices all gave up more than 4 percent. It was the worst day for the US stock market since December 2008.None of this should surprise those conversant with Austrian economics. The "fundamentals" of the economy have been and remain awful because the government and Federal Reserve are consistently doing the wrong things. The apparent recovery, fueled by Bernanke's sheer money creation, has been bogus all along.bubble, Bubble, BubbleFor some reason, people still cling to the vague hope that — at least if we wait long enough — the market always goes up, and "buy and hold" is a great strategy. Let's look at a long-term chart of the S&P 500:

While much has been written about the fact that Latin America’s rapidly growing economies are largely immune to U.S. financial woes, President Obama’s deal with Congress to avoid a U.S. debt default will have a negative impact throughout the region. Granted, the consequences would have been much worse if the U.S. government had failed to reach an agreement — even a bad one, as the one it reached — and the United States had lost its AAA credit rating.Still, the U.S. debt agreement, scheduled to cut the U.S. budget deficit by at least $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years and allow a 12-member commission decide on additional deficit reduction measures by Nov. 23, is likely to slow down the already timid U.S. economic recovery, and affect all countries in the region to some degree.Osvaldo Kacef, head of the Santiago, Chile-based United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) economic development area, told me that the U.S. debt agreement will hurt Latin America in the short run, because the expected U.S. economic slowdown will reduce U.S. imports and reduce the flow of U.S. tourists to the region.“The most immediate impact will be felt in those countries that have the most intense trade with the United States, such as Mexico and Central America,” Kacef said. “Caribbean countries that depend heavily on U.S. tourism will also be affected.”