Unlike the girl from Ipanema, the real’s swings and sways have been anything but cool and gentle. Foreign investors’ infatuation buoyed up the currency from its winter lows by 54.5 per cent against the dollar and 23 per cent in trade-weighted terms – until the government said “too much” and placed a 2 per cent tax on portfolio inflows.

Though offended investors let both stock prices and the real slip, this was a good choice by the government. Justifying it as exchange rate management, however, is starting at the wrong end of things. The appreciating real is a symptom of Brazil’s conundrum; the underlying cause is capital inflows that have been increasing in intensity for years, temporarily interrupted by the financial crisis.