The New Market Machines Radio

Getting ready for tonight's climactic debate on the Globo network between the PT incumbent and the PSDB-PFL challenger in the Brazilian elections, we leave you with a musical interlude to get you in the mood ... including the Anglospherean debut of Brazil's hottest new band, O Cordel do Fogo Encantado.

I may just give up working and become a wandering Fogohead ...

Dateline: The largest city in Latin America.

Live on tape from the lobby of the World Federation of Exchange's annual meeting in the wasteland that is Morumbi, São Paulo; in governance vote, KQED exec wants a Bush-like state of exception; Richard Florida peddles the same old snake oil; plus the latest from Caetano Veloso: "Odeio você!"

The Brazilian political scenario; big bank strike busts out; FEBAN and Microcode; racial democracy and other myths; the open-source e-government that never came to be; corruption rules my soul; plus Robert Lefkowitz on Orwell and Open Source(TM), in a nod to the pods.

Brazil votes; plus, from the news desk, mondo global market machines stories with an Act III yet to be written, from India, Russia, Mexico, China and, of course, Brazil; Man overboard; Bob vs. Chico; Globo talking heads warm up the blinking lights, though failure to schedule democracy for primetime continues to irk; and the best country song ever about the generals and their Economic Miracle ...

Out of alpha and sticking to a schedule, it's the New Market Machines Week in Review from São Paulo, Brazil: BRIC-centric coverage of global media and finance with a pandeiro beat in the background.

This week, more tainment than info, but still: Brazil overhauls IT tax incentives; new pools of dark liquidity; pig****er media politics in Mexico leave risk managers jobless; Citi scandal No. 1,001(a); Cardosonomics dissed; Red Hat routed; and more.

Plus the other city that smells not so nice they named it twice channels the 1970s Lower East Side. Now with extra animal noises. Confiram! Aproveitem!

The week ahead in the emerging markets: morning headlines; Shanghai corruption scandal; M$FT in Rio; the yellow press goes whole hog ahead of Sunday's election in Brazil. Plus monkeys bite me!

I lost five minutes out of this podcast somehow, right in the middle, where the musical interlude cuts in suddenly. Oh, well.

Today: Initiating regular coverage of top headlines from the principal national and regional business pubs in Brazil; Ambulance mobster lies his ass off, and the press prints every word; why cultural minister Gil has to moonlight as a rock star; and a shoutout to my bro in law in Chile ...

The dossier scandal: media mudwrestling at its most fascinatingly repulsive; Thai coup deals Brazilian bourses a blow; Carrefour beats Wal-Mart to the church of the consumer credit;  BNDES shifts gears; Central banks notes big gringobuck inflows and progress in the war on the Cayman Island bank account; Petrobras will open plants in Venezuela, but Chavez's "devil" crack goes unreported; plus the newsdesk idolizes Macunaíma, and Los Tigrrrres del Norrrte ...

Bolivia boggles 'Bras, but cooler heads prevail; Bovespa borks; Chavez blows off Calderbrón; the capoeira of digital political scandalmongering; Globo and Net Virtua suck; so does Telefónica Speedy; vigilante consumerism in alien milieus; Bush approves public database of federal contracts; Latin American journalism endorsed by Broadcast Board of Governors; FCC shreds the documents; robots hunt dark liquidity; plus an homage to Chico Buarque, here in town throughout October -- WITH WEB EXCLUSIVE, a preview of Chico's new album, Carioca ...

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

Sampa and a mad dog in the noonday son: Marks of weakness, marks of woe; the digital divide index is flat at horrendous; Bolivia goes bonkers; Silicon Valley, Pernambuco; where to buy the Gazeta Mercantil; MV Bill tells it like it is (uix);

Musical interludes:

1. Cramps, "Aloha From Hell"
2. Tom Zé, "Augusta, Angelica, Consolação"
3. MV Bill + Os Racionais, "Muita Treta"
4. Swingle Singers, "Bacchic Sha-do-baba-la-diddy-diddy "

Odd network behavior means it's time to run some traceroutes; how to get a handle on information superhighway road rage; plus political scandalmongering, decoded.

Political economy and mass mediamongering bits and bytes, spontaneously interpreted by yours truly; plus a new history of PAN traces its long ties to the International Republican Institute and the NED.

From the newsdesk, GDP au gogo; philology you can boogie to.

 I am still having to send my communiques overland, via motoboy, from the broadband-deprived cave where I am hiding in the Vila Bia district of the megapolis.

Here is our hangover edition from Sept. 7, including:

1. Early spring and the thoughts of the paulistas turn to ultraviolence;
2. My Pat Kiernan imitation: the morning papers
3. Humint report
   
4. Huddling with the NMM kitchen cabinet of local culture-shock consultants

An intercontinental ballistic edition of NMM Radio:

1. Dealing with broadband deficit: tips for the traveler
2. What bossa nova is, and what it is not: a musical interlude and tutorial
3. Benchmarking the Brazilian media: Carta Capital and IstoÉ on elections, fiscal policy and the march of history.

The NMM crew arrives safely in Sampa; plus The Pod People, with Anil Dash and a twist on the usual leftist critique of media concentration ...

A new feature on the NMM Radio: A weekly in-depth take on coverage of a single story from the week's newsflow.

This week: Kudos to KCRW for the only in-depth roundtable discussion of events on the ground in Mexico, and a violent heaping of scorn on the Wall Street Journal's Latin American desk for phoning in sophomoric editorializing rather than substantive reporting -- an egregious case of journalistic malpractice.

Incidental music:

Carmen Miranda, "Camisa Listada" (Source: Ao Chiado Brasileiro)
Tribe Called Quest, "What's the Scenario?"

Correction: The PAN spokesman is a Mr. Sarukhan, not "Sarkhuman." I think the name of an evil character from Tolkien crept into my brain there ...

On-hold music we would actually like to hear ... a musical interlude. Enjoy.

A special Latin American edition, featuring: Blogging while nervous; a visual guide for the blind to Mexican electoral fraud; exercises in comparative corporate governance; the NMM goes whole hog into the BRIC markets; reporting outside the Green Zone; why there could have been no Elvis without Carmen Miranda;  carnivalesque transpositions of  legitimate and black market machines; Jackson Pollock passed out here; my FBI file;  and more.

Musical interludes and motifs, among others:

1. Martin da Vila, "Pelo Telefone"
2. Os Mutantes, "El Justiciero"
3. Carmen Miranda, "Chica Chica Boom Chic"
4. Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, "What is this America?"
5. Hermeto Pascoal, "Fica mal com deus"
6. Buzzcocks, "Autonomy"

Monitoring the struggle of the "netroots" against the "mainstream media" amid Mexico City mobilizations over charges of massive electoral fraud. Key developments, key players, key strategies. Musical interlude at 21:00.

This is basically a terrible case of me mumbling to myself, so remember: This is only a test! In the future, scripted narration, better elocution, audio snippets from the best of the pods to relieve you of my nasal droning.

Skip to 21'00'' for a four-song musical interlude you might enjoy better.

Note a new, proposed permanent audio element: The Small Faces' "Wicked Messenger" as a shorter lead-in to the news briefs. "Wordy Rappinghood" as a lead-in to the "Jargon Watch" feature?

This program under construction.

Here, fresh from the NMM studios in Media City, Dubai, is a special edition of the NMM podcast on the Mexican elections.

It's really embarassing to hear myself pronouncing Spanish names and phrases with a (bad) Brazilian accent. Sendero al Fecal comes out sendeiro ao fecau ...

I'm badly in need of some real voice talent for this little podcast! Really, the whole thing is kind of a wank -- me trying out my sound bites over and over again. I would be better off just translating headlines from the Mexican press on the subject.

Here's another important study from UNAM:

• R. Mansilla, Benford's Law and the July 2 PREP Results (Spanish)