Tag Archives: Brazil

by Ana Luíza Matos de Oliveira Brazil is a highly unequal country — so is the access to its higher education system. However, in the beginning of the 21st century (2001-2015), there was a convergence between the profile of Brazilian higher education students and the Brazilian population in terms of income, race, and region, although many inequalities still exist. Now, this process might be at risk. From 2001 to 2015, economic growth and improvements in the labor market affected...

by Ana Luíza Matos de Oliveira, Lygia Sabbag Fares, Gustavo Vieira da Silva, and Luiza Nassif Pires Even though Covid-19 has already killed thousands worldwide and is paralyzing global economic activity, President Jair Bolsonaro insists on referring to it as a “little flu.” Despite the president’s efforts to avoid a halt to the economic activity in Brazil, the rhythm in the country has slowed down and people who can afford to stay confined at home are doing so. This week, several cities...

In late April, Petrobras approved the sale of eight refineries as part of its divestment plan. In May, the energy firm struck a deal with the Brazilian antitrust regulator that will allow it to sell those downstream assets in a bid, the company said, to encourage greater competition in the industry.... OilpriceBrazil Aims For $18 Billion From Its Sale Of Key Refinery AssetsTsvetana Paraskova

Lula detailed the current “terrible conditions” for Brazilian workers. He ripped to pieces the economic program – basically a monster sell-out – of Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy and Pinochetist who’s applying the same failed hardcore neoliberal prescriptions now being denounced and scorned every day in the streets of Chile. He detailed how the Brazilian right wing openly bet on neo-fascism, which is the form that neoliberalism recently took in Brazil. He blasted mainstream...

Franklin Serrano and Vivian Garrido (Guest bloggers)When the Brazilian economy was growing with low unemployment rates and reducing income inequality, it was said that “businessmen have never made so much money” and, at the same time, the business community’s discontent with the government was increasing. On the other hand, in the current situation of semi-stagnation that followed from a deep recession, the entrepreneurs of both real and financial sectors declare their unrestricted support...

Lula's recent interview with Pepe Escobar and others.Asia TimesLula tells world he’s back in the game from jail Pepe Escobar

Last summer readings The issue of class conflict and its relation to accumulation of capital was central for classical political economists of the surplus approach. That tradition has survived in political science mostly through the work of Marxist authors. And in many recent discussions of the Brazilian crisis, that started with the 2013 protests, the 2015 turn in economic policy (the so-called New Economic Matrix), the 2016 mediatic/parliamentary coup against Dilma, and the 2018...

Beijing could be forever tarnished if it does ‘dirty business’ with the Bolsonaro government in Brazil Asia TimesChina must avoid a role in destruction of AmazonPepe Escobar

Gabriel Aidar and Julia Braga (Guest Bloggers) We have, in our new paper, gone back to the old pull-push debate on determinants of capital inflows to emerging markets, to look at the behavior of country risk premium spreads. Our Principal Component Analysis of the country-risk spread series of ten emerging economies from 1999 to 2019 revealed that 86% of the total volatility of the original series can be represented by only two components, suggesting the prevalence of common factors in...

  Cartoonish figures... and Disney toons too With the incoming inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the United States and the two largest countries in the Latin American region will have what the press has more or less universally and uncritically referred to as populist leaders in power. It has been very common in the press to compare Trump and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) as right and left-wing populists. And although the term has not been applied as often to Bolsonaro,...