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U.S.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released Friday, September 22, its issue brief, "Brazil's Presidential Election: Background on Economic Issues."
The paper looks at the last four years of economic policies and results and considers what changes in economic policy might take place in the next few years. "The big challenge for Brazil will be to restore reasonable economic growth, to bring to an end the 25-year economic growth failure that has plagued the country," said economist Mark Weisbrot, co-director of CEPR and principal author of the report. Brazil's GDP per person has grown only 11% over the past 25 years, or less than one half percent annually. By comparison, from just 1980-2000 it grew by 123%. The paper notes that if Brazil had continued growing at its pre-1980 rate, which was nowhere near the fastest among developing countries, it would have European living standards today. Per capita income has grown about 1.4% annually for the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva presidency, about the same as during the previous 8 years of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidency. This was enough to match the expansion of the labor force, but not enough to make a dent in the country's high unemployment rates. "Of all the policies stifling growth in Brazil, the excessively high interest rates set by Brazil's Central Bank are probably the most destructive," Weisbrot noted. Short-term rates are currently set at 14.25%, as compared to 5.25 in the United States, despite the fact that the two countries have about the same rate of inflation (Brazil's is slightly lower). The report looks at monetary and exchange rate policy, the "Bolsa Família" anti-poverty program and other policy measures implemented in recent years. The analysis indicates that achieving significant reductions in poverty and unemployment will be difficult or impossible without macroeconomic policy changes that can restore healthy rates of economic growth. The Center for Economic and Policy Research is an independent, nonpartisan think tank that was established to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. CEPR's Advisory Board of Economists includes Nobel Laureate economists Robert Solow and Joseph Stiglitz; Richard Freeman, Professor of Economics at Harvard University; and Eileen Appelbaum, Professor and Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University You can read the paper in its entirety here: www.cepr.net/publications/Brazil_2006_09_22.pdf
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
This is not what Lula, the King of crooks, the Emperor of liars, the God corrupted to the roots.........is saying !!!!!!!
Strange ! Isnt it ?
Laugh !