Editorial – The Farce of Neoliberalism – Focus Brasil

Military thinker and general Nelson Wernick Sodry, in the midst of a long and prolific career as a scholar of national problems, released A Knight Does Neoliberalism in 1995, his latest work. The initial character of the book shows its complete adequacy. Sudry points out, “The concentration of income is a global phenomenon and only indicates a crisis of capitalism which, for this very reason, seeks to reorganize the world according to the interests of capital.”

Fragments of the neoliberal wave spread across the world, especially in the early 1980s with the rise of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the US and UK respectively. The emergence of this economic matrix has turned central banks into the revolving door of financial markets. Instead of acting as regulators and agents of monetary policy, attacking inflation and also encouraging full employment stimuli, they only act as “regulators” of public debt, practicing deflationary policies that hinder the growth of economies.

Isn’t it, for example, what we are currently seeing in Brazil? The initiative to promote so-called autonomy in British Columbia—an age-old aspiration of Brazilian rentierism, put into practice by Chicago boy Paulo Guedes—far from fulfilling the ideas approved by Congress in the law that gave rise to it, is only about inflationary goals. Forget job creation. Hence the real “footnote” on the economy: the stratospheric interest rate of 13.75%, which dampens investment and economic growth.

Responsibility for public accounts has long been the keyword of the governments led by Lula. He was the president who canceled debts with the International Monetary Fund and paved the way for a massive increase in Brazil’s foreign exchange reserves. It is the amount of 375 billion dollars that supports the country and prevents the fluctuations of international crises and their repercussions on Brazil.

The future of the nation depends on growth. It is necessary to instill hope in the hearts and minds of the Brazilian people. This requires social justice and citizenship. The old elites could no longer enforce their old motto: “A little flour, mush first.