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Brazil Finds Nice-Guy Role in Debt Drama Difficult

The international banking tremors brought on when successive financial crises in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil threatened to set off a Third World "debt bomb" have abated as a series of financial rescue packages have fallen into place.Each country now has a stringent economic austerity program, designed by the International Monetary Fund to cut dependence on foreign cash.

U.S. Treasury officials believe there should be a new approach by the world's industrialized nations to Third World debt problems and said the issue would be raised by the Reagan administration at the economic summit meeting in Williamsburg later this month, officials traveling with Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan said Treasury officials said there are any number of ways in which this could be done, ranging from an informal approach to the formal establishment

Japan is leapfrogging from cash to plastic, completely bypassing the rest of the world's dependence on checks.In a country where until recently even the largest bills have been paid in cash, suddenly everyone is issuing plastic credit cards: banks, finance companies, department stores, gas companies, airlines and, of course, credit- card companies.From being just about unknown a decade ago, credit cards are now in the hands of about 50 million Japanese.

There is a bank in New York City at 72nd street and Broadway where you are only allowed to deal with a human teller if you have $5000 or more in your account. If you have less money than that, you have to conduct routine business with an electronic machine. Ever since I read about this new Citibank policy, I have been trying to figure out what it means.

razil's creditors hope that this weekend will mark the beginning of a second--and this time successful--phase in dealing with the acute financial crisis in the developing world's most indebted nation.Last week, Brazil reached tentative agreement with the International Monetary Fund on a new economic program that should enable the international agency and commercial banks to resume lending to the cash-starved nation.

The getaway plan of three novice middle-class bank robbers, armed with a nickle-plated pistol, two ounces of nearly pure cocaine and their cash, was to slip off to Disney World until the heat died down, authorities believe.But five days after holding up a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea savings and loan, the cash was spent, the drugs were gone, two were dead of overdoses and a third had shut down the Orlando International Airport with a bomb threat.

DEBTOR NATIONS NEED SHORT-TERM AID, AN EXPERT SAYS.Former World Bank president Robert S. McNamara told reporters yesterday in Washington that there was no way such countries as Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil and Chile could service their foreign debts because their payments range from 116 percent to 180 percent of the value of their total export earnings. McNamara estimated that debt payments for Venezuela, Colombia, the Philippines and Peru were more than 90 percent.

Major banks here and abroad, by charging premium interest rates and stiff special fees, have extracted a bonus of more than $800 million from Mexico as the price of maintaining their lending relationships with that hard-pressed debtor country.Similar fees and extra interest are being charged by the banks to other countries as their debts are rolled over in cooperation with emergency programs financed by the IMF.

Sometime -- maybe last September or October -- Brazil quietly changed from being "a country of the future" to being a country courting default. But Brazilians -- and the rest of the world -- are only finding out now.Brazil carries the world's largest foreign debt, more than $83 billion, including enough U.S. loans to shut down several New York banks if the debts have to be written off.

In discussing the world debt problem, the abstract comes down to reality when looking at a single country's problems. The focus at the moment is Brazil, which literally exploded in an economic boom in the 1960s, fed by gung- ho banks working with a privileged upper class in Brazil, and which now threatens to come apart at the seams. Horror of horrors for the financial world, a repudiation of Brazil's $90 billion debt looms as a real possibility.

When the doors slammed shut on Penn Square Bank last summer and the nation's financial centers began to reel from the reverberations, a group of bankers here were about to learn that they, too, would be touched by that obscure little shopping center bank in Oklahoma City.Seven months later, in what some call Knoxville's St. Valentine's Day Massacre, United American Bank of Knoxville would itself be declared insolvent, closed and sold.

he one element of present-day Uganda that sparks an animated monologue from an otherwise phlegmatic President Milton Obote is the slow, but dramatic improvement in the economy.Obote is happy to explain that since he took office in December 1980, despite the draining impact of a protracted civil war, Uganda's monthly revenue from export earnings has jumped from $8 million to $30 million a month.

Panic was the fuel that gave the Institute of International Finance (IIF) its start. Bankers shaken by the Mexican debt crisis last year created it to provide a better source of credit information about the nations lined up at their loan windows.But the new research agency's fuel has not carried it very far or very fast, and some regional bankers who gathered here last week for the annual International Monetary Fund meeting.

The Philippines' prime minister may be ousted in a showdown between business leaders and President Ferdinand Marcos' political allies, reports said Sunday.The Bulletin Today and Times Journal newspapers, which generally reflect government sentiment, said an "influential bloc" in the national assembly has threatened a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Cesar Virata when the body convenes July 25.

A sense of complacency on the Third World debt problem has set in. Says former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Hormats, "Right now, we may simply be in the eye of the hurricane." His judgment is shared privately by key figures in the multilateral lending institutions.Today's seeming calm can be traced to a successful short-term emergency rescue job triggered by Mexico's troubles last year.

The Bottom Line Oneida Ltd. has announced it has signed a letter of intent to buy all the capital stock of Buffalo China Inc., a privately held company, for an undisclosed amount of cash, securities and notes ... John H. Sottile has been elected to the vacant position of president of the Melbourne-based Goldfield Corp ... Key Pharmaceuticals Inc. proposed to stockholders a three- for-two stock split, payable Nov. 3 to holders of record Oct. 21.

A Paris-based bank with the exotic name of Banque Indosuez, considered to be one of the largest international banks in the world, apparently likes what it sees in Boston area real estate. Last year, this international financial institution purchased Boston's historic Sears Crescent Building in the Government Center from Cabot, Cabot & Forbes. And now the bank has added a couple of Boston suburban properties to its investment portfolio.

Jacques de Larosiere, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, suggested yesterday that countries like Mexico that have been making suitable "adjustments" to their international debt problems should be rewarded by commercial banks with somewhat easier loan terms.In a speech last night to the Economic Club of Chicago, de Larosiere also defended the IMF against charges that it had imposed undue hardship in setting conditions for its Third World loans.

While the Reagan administration may ultimately squander billions in seeking an elusive military solution in Central America, it is trying to save chicken feed by paring back subsidized loans to Africa, Asia and other poverty- stricken areas around the globe.When writing out checks for the military, Uncle Sam willingly plays the role of Santa Claus. When it comes to showing compassion for the less fortunate--even when our own self-interest is tied up in their welfare.

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