O boi
O causador disso tudo que nos acontece e que poderá durar muito tempo foi o Lula
Faltam-me palavras para dar conta do que está acontecendo no Brasil. Eu nunca vi o país assim. Já vi crises violentas como a morte de Getúlio ou o golpe militar, mas esta tem uma característica diferente; é pastosa, uma areia movediça que engole tudo.O que é uma crise? Digamos que um projeto político ou empresarial quisesse chegar a determinado objetivo. Corria um risco. Se não desse certo, teríamos uma crise. Era a época dos riscos. Hoje vivemos na incerteza, porque não sabemos como agir.Hoje, a crise é sonâmbula — como chegar e onde chegar? O grave é que esses impasses estão eliminando os instrumentos institucionais da democracia.O Congresso brasileiro é chefiado por dois sujeitos investigados com provas e recibos por crimes na Lava-Jato, e também o Renan quando fugiu para não ser cassado pela evidência de suas jogadas. E hoje preside o Senado. Conta isso para um alemão, um inglês, e eles não acreditarão.O Brasil está se esvaindo em sangue por causa de um cabo de guerra entre Dilma e Cunha, em amor e ódio, em busca de proteção mútua: "Você me salva do impeachment e eu tento evitar sua cassação". O Brasil está paralisado porque o Cunha está mandando no país, porque detém o poder de chantagear todo mundo, mesmo denunciado até pela Suíça (que chic!). Como pode o Legislativo estar nas mãos desses caras? Parece não haver um só lugar onde não haja roubo. Na saúde, na merenda escolar, na educação.O Brasil está encurralado entre uma flébil tentativa de ajustar as contas públicas e o ajuste sendo usado como moeda de troca. O Congresso está bloqueando nossa recuperação. O Brasil está sendo chantageado. "Se o Brasil não me atender, eu destruo o Brasil."Antigamente o segredo era a alma dos negócios espúrios. Hoje os mais sujos interesses são expostos à luz fria de um bordel. Está tudo em nossa cara.Sempre houve roubalheira, considerada apenas um "pecado" e era uma roubalheira setorial, descentralizada, e não esta coisa sólida, extensa, onipresente. Tudo o que já apareceu nessa extraordinária ressurreição do Judiciário, por conta dos competentes juízes e procuradores, será um troco, uma mixaria quando chegarem ao fundos de pensão, ao BNDES e a outras empresas públicas.A política está impedindo a política. Mentem e negam o tempo todo e não desmoralizam a verdade apenas; estão desmoralizando a mentira. São patranhas tão explícitas, tão cínicas que desmoralizam a mentira. O óbvio está escondido debaixo da mesa. O óbvio está no escuro, o óbvio está na privada. Quanto à verdade, é fácil descobri-la: ela é o contrário, o avesso de tudo que políticos investigados afirmam.Ninguém acredita mais no que o Lula fala (só pobres analfabetos e intelectuais imbecis), ninguém acredita mais no que a Dilma gagueja sob o som dos panelaços, nem no Renan, no Cunha, mas o show continua. Há um complô de enganação da sociedade. Por quê? Porque a sociedade para eles é um bando de idiotas que precisam ser tutelados pelo Estado de esquerda ou enrolados pelos oligarcas privados. Esse foi nosso pior destino: a união entre a chamada esquerda e a velha direita.Dilma não sai nem morta, ela disse. Cunha não sai nem morto. E os dois em confronto encurralam o país numa briga de foice. São demitidos 3 mil por dia e o total geral de desempregados já está em 1 milhão e 200 mil de pobres vítimas desse prélio de arrogância e narcisismo. Teremos um déficit fiscal de R$ 70 bilhões. E tudo bem? No Congresso ninguém liga. Dane-se o país, quero o meu...Faltam-me palavras. Que nome dar por exemplo a esse melaço de gente que odeia reformas e o novo? Que medula, que linfa ancestral os energiza, que visgo é esse que gruda em tudo? É uma pasta feita de egoísmo, preguiça, herança colonial, estupidez e voracidade pura. Que nome dar? A gosma do Mesmo?O dicionário não basta para descrever uma figura como o Cunha, cuja aparência não engana. Ele é o que parece, nunca vi um desenho tão perfeito de uma personalidade. O povo vê horrorizado sua carantonha e seu bico voraz e percebe que está diante do mal. O povão não entende muito, mas tem sensibilidade. Cunha é a cara do pesadelo brasileiro. E tantos outros, escondidos por sorrisos, cabelinhos de acaju ou de asas da graúna.Nós jornalistas e comentaristas tentamos ver algum ângulo novo na crise atual, mas já estamos nos repetindo, martelando o óbvio. Todos os artigos parecem um só. Eu busco novas ideias, novas ironias para esculachar essa vergonha, mas ela é maior que as palavras.Falamos, falamos e não descobrimos o essencial: como é que essa porra vai acabar?O Brasil estava entrando no mundo contemporâneo com uma nova visão de economia e gestão e vieram esses caras e comeram tudo, como as porcadas magras quando invadem o batatal. Essa crise é terrível porque é uma caricatura. É crise do superficial, do inerte, da anestesia sem cirurgia. A crise é um pesadelo humorístico. A crise não merece respeito. Sei lá, a depressão de 29 foi uma tragédia real. Esta nossa é uma anedota. Ela foi criada artificialmente por essa gentalha que tomou o poder e resolveu ser contra "tudo isso que está ai". Quem estava aí era o Brasil. Eram as conquistas da democracia, essa palavra que eles usam com boquinha de nojo, apenas como pretexto, como estratégia para a tal "linha justa". Como dizia o Bobbio: "O que mais une o fascismo e o comunismo é seu ódio à democracia." O que provocou tudo isso? Foi o populismo endêmico, o patrimonialismo secular, a ignorância histórica. E esse sarapatel pariu um sujeito despreparado e deslumbrado consigo mesmo, cujo carisma de operário fascinou intelectuais babacas e comunas desempregados desde 1968, que resolveram fazer uma revolução endógena, um "gramscianismo" de galinheiro.O PT está arrasando o país. Essa é a verdade. Temos que dar nome aos bois, ou melhor, ao boi. O causador disso tudo que nos acontece e que poderá durar muito tempo foi o Lula. Sim. Esse homem que nunca viu nada, que não sabia de nada é o grande culpado da transformação. Mas, o MPF e a Polícia Federal estão chegando perto dele e de suas ocultações. Ele é o boi.
Mises Daily, December 4, 2015
A few years ago, in 2009, The Economist magazine published an issue with its front cover showing a picture of the statue of Christ the Redeemer, one of the main symbols of Brazil, taking off like a rocket. This symbolized the country’s growing economy. The title of the article read “Brazil takes off.” However, in 2013, the same magazine published another issue with its front cover showing a picture of the statue going down like a misfired rocket. The title of the main article asked “Has Brazil blown it?” Yes. It blew it. An even more recent issue, from 2015, states that the country is in a quagmire.
With President Dilma Rousseff now facing impeachment, doubts may arise about the future of Brazil. How likely is this impeachment to remove her from office? And what changes will occur in case it does happen? To answer, I’m going to briefly analyze the last twenty years of Brazilian politics.
Along with Latin America and Eastern Europe, Brazil went through a series of reforms during the 1990s, especially in the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (also known as FHC) from 1995 to 2002. FHC actually started the reforms when he was finance minister in the government of his predecessor, Itamar Franco (1992–1994). During the administration of FHC’s successor Lula da Silva (2003–2006), the reforms seemed to continue, paving the way for the prosperity observed in 2009. But things just appeared that way.
FHC and Lula are the better known former presidents in Brazil since 1985, when the country resumed governmental democracy after twenty years of military presidencies. And the two were also heads of the country’s two major political parties, respectively PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party, or Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira) and PT (Worker’s Party, or Partido dos Trabalhadores).
PSDB and PT have similarities and differences. Both parties define themselves as center-left in the single-axis political spectrum. Both parties came into existence in the late 1970s or early 1980s, coming from a prior condition of bipartisanship forced by the military. Both parties include social democracy as part of their political ideology.
But the similarities end there. PT came into existence from three main segments: first, the basic ecclesial communities linked to the Liberation Theology in Latin America, especially in the ABC Region, an industrial region in Greater São Paulo. In the 1970s these communities tried to combine Marxism and Catholicism, turning Jesus into a first century Palestine social revolutionary. Second, PT has its origins in the labor movement of the same region in Sao Paulo — that’s where Lula came from. And finally, the party’s founders were die-hard radical socialists that participated in guerrilla activity against the military government — financed and trained mainly by Cuba — that’s where Rousseff came from.
A more detailed analysis might show that the party had more pragmatic, power-seeking wing — represented by Lula — and a more ideological one.
Among PSDB’s founders were well-established politicians from the PMDB (the opposition party to the military government). Like the founders of the PT, the PMDB opposed the dictatorship, but without the backing of outside communist regimes.
Instead, the PMDB used the legal institutional means available at the time. Although “social democracy” is in its name, PSDB was a much more pragmatic party from its inception, leaning toward a radical centrism, in the sense of calling for fundamental reform of institutions and believing that “genuine solutions require realism and pragmatism, not just idealism and emotion.”
Over time the party was much more willing to support market-based solutions to social problems than its counterpart. The party — and specially FHC — can also be identified with the Third Way, much like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
For other countries, the Third Way may be “the fastest route to the Third World.” But in Brazil’s case, coming from a situation of extreme statism since the 1930s, the reforms undertaken by FHC during the nineties were a major relief by comparison. But because of them, the president was accused of being neoliberal, meaning, a follower of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (or even worse — from the left-wing point of view — a follower of F.A. Hayek or Milton Friedman).
Lula came to power in 2003 promising to leave behind the more radical positions of his party and to adopt a more pragmatic approach, not much different from that of FHC. That seemed to be the case for a while, and that’s when TheEconomist committed the mistake of believing Brazil was taking off. But for the more attentive observer it was clear that this could not be the case. Lula slowly but certainly abandoned the more market-oriented policies, a gesture consolidated by his successor, Dilma Rousseff. Instead of deepening the reforms started by FHC, PT was satisfied with keeping them in place for a while, and then abandoning them altogether.
I could go further in the past to explain how Brazil had an anti-liberal mentality from its beginning. But here it’s sufficient to say that, although being a multi-party country, Brazil has two major political forces: the PT and the PSDB. Neither of them is essentially market-friendly. But that’s not to say there are no differences between them. Even a pragmatist like Lula has to please his followers. With its socialist DNA, there’s no hope that PT will do what Brazil needs. And while they stay in power, Brazil’s economy is not resurging any time soon.
In 1992, then-President Fernando Collor was impeached, and what followed were the liberal reforms of FHC. But Collor didn’t have one thing Dilma has: a strong party.
The PT may throw Dilma to the lions in order to appease opposition and the population, but it won’t abandon its skepticism of liberalism, and there are no market-friendly political forces to fill any political vacuum that may result from Rousseff’s removal. With or without Dilma, this is still not time for optimism. Maybe a more pragmatic hope will do.
Published by EH.Net (December 2015)
Lodewijk Petram, The World’s First Stock Exchange. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. vi + 296 pp. $30 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-231-16378-1.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Ranald Michie, Department of History, Durham University.
The subject of this book is the world’s first stock exchange, which the author locates in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century. As becomes apparent in the text (pp. 181-82), no stock exchange was formed in Amsterdam at that time. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange Association was not established until 1876 and it did not occupy its own building until 1913. Both these events were long after stock exchanges had been founded in numerous other cities in the world, such as London and New York. What the author confuses is trading in corporate stocks and a stock exchange. The former is a market whereas the latter is an institution. This difference matters because of the important contribution that rules and regulations make to reducing counterparty risk, eliminating price manipulation, addressing trading abuses and ensuring the permanence and continuity of opportunities to buy and sell. That leads to a question that this book does not answer. Why was a stock exchange not formed in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century given the early start that was made there in establishing a market for stocks and the need to respond to all the problems it led to for those involved? Clues are provided in the text to such a question but it remains unanswered because it is not asked.
The failure of the author to distinguish between a market and an exchange, and then discuss why the former did not lead to the latter in seventeenth century Amsterdam, is a pity because the book contains much of interest and relevance. The material that the author uses is largely that generated by disputes between those involved in this early stock market whether they were investors, brokers or dealers. Using this legal material provides a great deal of depth to an understanding of this early stock market but the overall result is rather episodic. Lacking the material produced by an institution such as a stock exchange, as there was none, there is no sense of development. Instead, there are a series of glimpses into a world in which the owning, buying and selling of corporate stocks gradually emerged from the shadows and took on a tangible form. The way this is presented is at variance with normal academic practice. Despite being based on a Ph.D. the focus is on telling a story based on the life and times of individuals, and extrapolating far beyond the evidence gleaned from the court records and business papers available. This makes the book very readable but at the expense of analysis and explanation.
Central to the narrative is the VOC (the Dutch East India Company), as it was the shares issued by it which provide the material out of which the early stock market in Amsterdam grew. As a trading company sending ships to Asia, its business prospects were highly uncertain, being exposed to the vagaries of weather and war as well as those of long-distance commerce, making its dividends a great unknown until formally declared by the directors. At times large dividends were declared while at others none resulted, while payment could be in anything from commodities like cloves, government bonds, or actual money. It was this uncertainty that generated a great deal of market activity as it attracted speculative interest, driven by news and rumors, as well as those looking for a permanent investment, willing to accept both losses and profits over the long run.
In turn the very volatility associated with VOC stock gave it a liquidity that attracted another class of investor. These were people, such as the merchants, with temporarily idle funds who looked for a suitable investment while waiting better paying opportunities. The stock market that developed in seventeenth century delivered this. Increasingly it became possible to trade in VOC shares not only for immediate delivery but also forward, providing opportunities for those with spare funds to employ them in this market or those in need of such fund to access them. Contributing enormously to the operation of this market was the use of options and the appearance of a growing number of brokers and dealers, as these provided those trading in VOC shares with a continuous market and ways of either increasing or reducing the risks that they took. These developments are expertly documented in this book and the reader is provided with a wealth of evidence detailing the way the market operated in the seventeenth century. That makes the book an invaluable addition to the literature on the history of securities markets.
The conclusion reached by the author is a rather negative one as he says little of value about the developments that took place in share trading in Amsterdam in the eighteenth century. The stock market was confined to the shares of one company, the VOC, with only one other being formed, the Dutch West India Company (WIC), which was not a success. In addition, the interpretation presented here focuses on the speculative element of share trading, which is inevitable given the material that is relied on. Disputes were usually generated when one party to a deal looking for a way of reneging on it when the outcome meant a large loss for himself. What is lost in this approach is the connections between the market in VOC shares and the wider money market and the complex world of international payments. There are hints of these connections in the book but they are not taken up. Reflecting the weakness of this element of the book is the lack of understanding of the developments being made in the rival stock market in London from 1694 with the formation of the Bank of England, as its shares could provide the depth and breadth that those of the VOC lacked, as it was a proxy for the debt of the UK government.
Ranald Michie is author of The London Stock Exchange: A History (1999) and The Global Securities Market: A History (2006), both published by Oxford University Press. He is currently completing a book entitled British Banking: Continuity and Change since 1694, also for Oxford University Press. He recently retired from Durham University as emeritus professor and is currently teaching at Newcastle University Business School.
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I have been observing European building up for the last 40 years. At the beginning, being from a region (South America and Mercosur), I was very sympathetic towards the European model, and thaught it could be a good exemple for South American integration.
Summing up, now, I think Europe has over-extended the utility of a very complex institutional architecture, and I come to recognize that your Lady Thatcher was right!
Europeans have built a gothic cathedral in Brussels, that is too complex to manage and too costly to entertain and keep running.
Every time that a problem is recognized, European leadership responds that all we (you) need "is more Europe", that is, erecting more alleys to an already complex and complicated gothic cathedral, wirh plenty of political gargouilles and bureaucratic circumvolutions. How to live with all that? And how to pay for it?
I think now that Brittons are right: better to have a light, small, flexible, cheaper instrument, and dismiss all this baroque, rococo, architecture.
I hope that we do not start to build a gothic cathedral in South America.
Paulo R. de Almeida
Brasilia, Brazil