BRAZIL-Not ALL is gloom and doom!

Cthe brighter side of the crisis

Yesterday, while watching the TV commentary of a business executive I heard the first public reference by business to a deliberate plan of the administration to tear down the Brazilian private sector.

I had been arguing for some time that the administration had been playing the game of “competent incompetence” as part of a plan to bring down private enterprise - i.e.  claiming to be held back or not having sufficient information and support, etc.

That comment was indeed refreshing because it brought the issue out into the open. The private sector had long been silent on the question of the administration’s motives and justifications for policy failures, making only occasional references to ideology.

Also present was a former government official at the Central Bank who took monetary and fiscal policies to task.

Both pundits also observed that besides the recognition of a “plan” (i.e. the New Economic Framework) to replace the private sector with public companies or government intervention and control in a kind of 21^stCentury Socialism like that of Venezuela or Argentina under Cristina, for the first time in Brazil, impunity is no longer tolerated. 

Until Lava-Jato, white-collar transgressors rarely were sanctioned for their crimes. Now, however, a lot of rather high-level people are sitting in the slammer – to include the president of Brazil’s largest construction company (sentenced today to 19 years in the cooler).

That’s why I referred to Brazil as almostparalyzed in my previous post. 

Five hundred years of kleptocracy is a long time and Brazil adapted to it as a way of “getting things done”. The traditional kleptocracy attracted other kleptocrats and it was not long before vital resources were siphoned off and unavailable for financing sustainable development.

The pundits argued that this is a permanent change in Brazil but will take a relatively long time to fix (but not another 500 years!)

Brazil has, for the time being, returned to being “a country of the future” until the kinks are worked out but the first step is “awareness” of the problems and that appears to have surfaced.

Be sure to include that “awareness” in your scenario exercises!