How does Brazil measure up to other emerging markets?

The global financial crises of 2008 and 2011 took their time to reach Brazil. However, when they did, it plunged the country into its worst recession on record, which only ended in the second quarter of last year. Since, recovery has been desperately slow. Growth figures have not exceeded 1.2 percent in the first two quarters of 2018, while the Brazilian Real has slid 21 percent against the U.S. Dollar.

In 2013, Morgan Stanley lumped Brazil alongside Indonesia, India, Turkey, and South Africa in a group known as the Fragile Five – a quintet of emerging economies deemed over-dependent on foreign investment for their domestic growth. As the U.S. economy began to recover and the Federal Reserve decreased money stimulus, investors moved their money out of these markets and went back to USD, causing substantial current account deficits in these five countries.

However, five years on,...