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Tag Archives: Brazil

Minsky Meets Brazil Part IV

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...

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The Mediatic-Parliamentary Coup in Brazil

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...

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Minsky Meets Brazil

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 –...

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Boycott the Rio Olympics to Defend Brazilian Democracy

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...

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Brazilian coup and US misinformation

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...

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Some thoughts on the impeachment and the right wing turn in Brazil

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...

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New York Times on the Brazilian coup… I mean impeachment

So for the correct view (yes, it was a coup) see Laura Carvalho here. As she says: The impeachment process of President Dilma Rousseff started as a retaliation by the speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, indicted for taking as much as $40 million in a kickback scheme at the state-owned oil company Petrobras. Cunha, whose name is also tied to the Panama Papers, initiated the impeachment process shortly after a public announcement by government allies that they would...

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Is there a solution to Brazil’s crises?

By Felipe Rezende This is the first of a series of posts on the Brazilian crises. There are two major crises Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff is facing: one is a political crisis and the other is Brazil’s sharpest recession in 25 years. Brazil’s Political Crisis The political crisis has two main pillars: a) a vast corruption scandal (with evidence of a kickback scheme funneling billions of dollars from state-run firms and, more recently, in a massive data leak over possible tax evasion,...

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Latin America turn to the right and American policy

Tom Jobim said that Brazil was not for beginners, and he was right. The Brazilian economy is in free fall. As I noted before the causes are strictly internal, and not related to any fiscal problem. Inflation was low, even if closer to the top margin of the inflation target. Devaluation of the currency has led to higher inflation, on the low two digit level, just slightly above 10%. At the same time, fiscal contraction has led to a collapse of about 3.5% of GDP last year. There is little need...

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