It must be a truly great thing to land a job as an economist in a Peru bank. Two main reasons:1) If you have a brain there's no competition
2) Say what you have to say in the right way and you get quoted everywhere by the lapdog press. World of Ego, here we come.
Case in point, Pablo Nano of Scotiabank. Señor Nano yesterday predicted that Peru's trade balance would come out positive in June, which is largely along the lines of predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow morning or that the current Pope is of the same religious creed as the previous incumbent Holy Father. What you have is a rapidly shrinking economy and deflation on one side (imports down? Duh!) and a rebound in metals prices as China buys up all that lovely copper and Switzerland squirrels away as much gold as it can get from Yanacocha and Pierina. Or in the words of Pablo, "The May numbers show on the one side a sustained recovery in exports and on the other a larger than expected drop in imports". No shit Sherlock.
And sure enough, today's imports numbers confirm that Peru's real economy is diving into an ever deeper recession. YoY imports are down 39.6% (really..not joking), with the worst affected sector that of capital goods and construction materials, down 44.9%. That makes the first six months of 2009 down 30.1% from the same period in 2008, so if you care to think about it, 30% in six months and 39.6% last month.....means......that....yep...it's getting worse, not better.
But Peru isn't in recession....oh no, whatever makes you think that?
UPDATE: A very sad but very true observation comes from regular reader Ward in the comments section below. Here's the excerpt:
"...the fact that you typically need to be (very) young, female and goodlooking to be hired by a Peruvian bank may not bode well for having the most qualified people for the job."