The Richest Industries in Brazil: A Guide

In the 90s, Brazilian policymakers were all like, "Let's get on that neoliberal wave, fam!" They wanted to turn around the weak economic growth and instability of the 80s, ya know? OMG, like in the neoliberal world of the IMF, the World Bank, and the gov of developed countries, the super annoying economic situation of the 80s was like proof that the state-gov development of countries like Brazil was sooo over it. Like, obvi, the new model of development should totally vibe with the neoliberal framework of the multilateral institutions, a framework that Brazilian policymakers are like super into. The neoliberal reforms are, like, totally part of an agenda associated with a bunch of economic reforms that are all about balancing payments and, like, the government backing off from regulating the market and selling off public companies.113 The economist John Williamson became hella famous by flexing and dubbing such lit agenda of reforms as the Washington Consensus.

The Economic Consequences of the Neoliberal Reforms in the 90s, like, totally shook things up, fam.

The ten reforms scheduled by Williamson (1990) covered three big areas: first, macroeconomic stability achieved through monetary and fiscal austerity; second, measures to flex with the world economy through trade liberalisation and financial mobility; the third area of reforms suggested selling off public firms and deregulation of markets – especially financial and labour markets. Integr8n with the int'l markets associated w/ the gov't reduction Final thoughts. So like, the whole external debt crisis thingy in 1982 totally shook things up in Brazil. It caused major changes in the economy and brought out some hidden trends, ya know? First, the vibes with the IMF and the creditor banks ended up flexin' a pro-creditor vibe to solve the debt crisis. OMG, like the foreign financing just ghosted us out of nowhere. And the IMF management package totally shook things up for the institutions that were supporting Brazilian development since, like, forever. OMG, like, to start off, the adjustment was totally biased against the effectiveness of public investments and caused major cutbacks in that area. SMH. The public sector getting clowned on, which was like the go-to excuse for policymakers, was just as whack as cutting back on public investments and messing up the whole economy's vibe. Public investments became, like, a total vibe for waste and public enterprises became, like, a mood for inefficiency. 

The vibes of those rationalisations were like, way less important than the interests they were serving, ya know?

On the flip side of the state's productive investments, the adjustment policies totally favored the financer interests. First, like, the nationalisation of debt was, like, forced on the state, either to, like, make sure foreign creditors get their money or to, like, help the private domestic sector get rid of their debt. The gov totally lost control over its money stuff cuz it had to get foreign cash from the private export peeps to pay off its debt. OMG, like the exchange rate needs to be hella devalued to boost exports, while the domestic interest rates gotta be high AF to make the private sector hold onto those public debts. In Brazil, like, they kept the interest rates super high by using this, like, complex and fancy system of daily indexed public securities. It was, like, totally sophisticated, you know? OMG, like no surprise, most basic analysts have totally linked the financial mess of the 80s, especially the whole inflation thing, with the public deficits. They're all like saying that deficits caused money to be printed and then boom, inflation happened (Edwards 1995; Franco 1999; Pinheiro, et al. 2001). But like, the indexed money thing was way more complicated than that, and tbh causality ran the other way around. To avoid flexin' on real or risky (especially foreign currency) assets, monetary policy should be tight and real interest rates on fleek. OMG, like the high interest payments were legit the reason for most of the public deficit in the 80s. It was cray cray! In macroeconomic balance, the public debt and deficit gotta be flexin' private credit and surplus, ya know?

The vibes in the private sector were, like, totally the opposite of what was going down in the public sector. 

The private sector totally flexed by passing on their debts to the public sector because of how inflation was messing with their money. OMG, like, way more lit than that was the monetary policy that raised interest rates paid on indexed public debt, which totally created a high-key profitable market for corporations and wealthy peeps. The high gains obtained, fam. Yo, like, financial investments were lit AF cuz of the high real interest rates. They totally attracted all the idle resources, whether from the banks, or from non-financial corps, or even from the richest fams. The financial system is all about those strong interests and investments in financial assets, you know? It's like all about those indexed public bills, fam. The issue in the Brazilian economy, tho, was that public debt and deficits weren't really causing any production or being spread out fairly. OMG, like for real, public resources were totally being used to protect bondholders at the expense of just one debtor, the state. In the 90s, the reasons that caused the debt crisis were over as money started flowing back to Brazil, and the lack of foreign exchange was no longer a problem. OMG, like Brazil was all about that capital inflow comeback and they made some major institutional changes that were totally on fleek with the neoliberal demands of the global financial fam. Could neoliberal institutions save Brazil from the mess neoliberal adjustment had caused in the 80s? What would be the vibes of market-led development for the Brazilian economy in the 1990s? These are the tea that are dealt with in the next chapter, fam.