Brazil government’s international liquidity position seems exceedingly strong

The Brazilian public sector could in principle pay down the entire external debt and still own three-quarters of the international reserves now sitting on the central bank's balance sheet.

Since it is very unlikely that the government will in fact choose to pay down its external debt, a more relevant metric is coverage of the debt that comes due in the nextyear or two. From now, two years of external public debt amortization would use up less than 5% of a year's exports and 3% of the country's international reserves. 

Foreign residents own roughly a fifth of the domestic public debt but, like domestic residents, these claims are payable in BRL. In the hypothetical event that these investors refuse to roll their debt, their only recourse would be to take the BRL payment and get in line behind other participants who are in the currency market to buy USD. 

This comes down to a currency problem, not a crisis of international liquidity. 

"In short, Brazilian public debt may be a problem, but unlike in some other emerging market economies today or the Brazil of 2002, it is close to inconceivable that the government will be forced by its external payment obligations into a foreign-currency cash crunch that would precipitate a debt restructuring", says Barclays.