Tag Archives: Brazil

So, a few days ago, someone (my bad, can't remember who did it) posted on FB a piece (in Portuguese and behind a wall; but this post is mostly about the role of historical comparisons really, so you can skip the piece altogether) on the Brazilian National Development Bank (Portuguese acronym is BNDES, btw) and how it lend more than the US government with the Marshall Plan. The guy did a back of the envelope calculation (I did check and bringing the US$ 13 billion to present value, with the...

By Naked Keynes (Guest Blogger)*Since the 2000s, like other countries in the region, Brazil adopted inflation targeting. The results are not encouraging. Brazil has, without doubt, the highest interest rate levels of Latin American economies. Brazil also has probably the widest interest rate spread in the region. In the first months of 2017, the monetary policy rate stood at 12.25%. Available data for interest rates for the year 2016 show that the deposit rate is around 12.43%, while the...

GDP has collapsed by a bit more than 7% in real terms over the last two years in Brazil (graph below show more recent data). This constitutes the worst crisis in recorded macroeconomic history, worse than the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and even the Great Depression. The reasons for this crisis are entirely self-inflicted. I discussed those issues before here (and here). The problem is not fiscal, which resulted from the crisis, nor external, since there was no real issue in financing...

Strange indeed I've been off for a few days for Thanksgiving, as you might have noticed. I visited Argentina, and will have something to say about the situation there in a few days. Here is something I was thinking about what is going on in Brazil, that seems to be in a never ending economic and political crisis. I find the situation particularly concerning for the future of the left in the region.There is a very nice little book about The Strange Death of Liberal England, (oddly...

By Felipe Rezende Part IV This last part of the series (see Part I, II, and III here, here and here) will focus on the Brazilian response to the crisis. What Should Brazil do? The Brazilian current crisis fit with Minsky’s theory of instability (see here, here and here). The traditional response to a Minsky crisis involves government deficits to allow the non-government sector to net save. That is, if the private sector desire to net save increases, then fiscal deficits increase to allow it...

President Dilma Rousseff was finally toppled down today. Yes, it's a coup, different in nature to the previous ones (last in Brazil was in 1964), but with the same consequences. I have discussed the nature of the process here, here, here, and here (this last more on the economy, from last year) before. It is a coup that has received discrete support from the US government, by the way, as much as the elected neoliberal government of Macri in Argentina (Obama visited the latter, a...

By Felipe Rezende Part I This series will discuss at length the underlying forces behind Brazil’s current crisis. A consensus has emerged in Brazil (and elsewhere) blaming Rousseff’s “new economic matrix” policies for the country’s worst crisis since the Great Depression (see here, here, here, here, and here).  With the introduction of policy stimulus through ad hoc tax breaks for selected sectors seen as a failure to boost economic activity and the deterioration of the fiscal balance –...

By Thomas PalleyTerrible anti-democratic events are now unfolding in Brazil with the constitutional coup against President Dilma Rousseff, organized through a cooked-up impeachment trial.The impeachment coup represents a naked attempt by corrupt neoliberal elements to seize power in Brazil. Make no mistake: it is a threat to democracy and social progress in Brazil, Latin America, and even the global community at large.If Brazilian voices concur, the world should respond by boycotting the Rio...

Brazil has an enormous past ahead As I suggested last month the coup had succeeded. Today Dilma Rousseff was effectively removed from the presidency. No real news here. I just want to correct, to some extent, the huge misinformation campaign in course in the US.  Monica de Bolle was saying many incorrect things on NPR this week (for example, that "the origins of the program called Bolsa Familia came from actually Cardoso's government, so the previous government, the PSDB government that...

Riding the coup bike without the military Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been impeached. The vice-president, Michel Temer, will assume the presidency temporarily while she is judged by the Senate. While the final outcome is still uncertain, it is very unlikely that she will return to office. This closes the long cycle of the left in Brazil, which started with the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency in 2002, and that led to the election and re-election of the...