At least compared to the standards of the past, Brazil has performed extremely well in terms of economic growth and monetary stability over the last six years. This success has come to a large extent from the peculiar fact that the current Brazilian president, Inácio Lula da Silva, has mostly done nothing. He did some traveling abroad, gave a lot of talk, did extensively tour the country and not missing the chance of a drink or two. Besides his anti-hunger campaign "zero fome" (no hunger), Lula initiated no large economic program and this way he has broken with a Brazilian tradition according to which each and every new president entered office with a package full of ill-devised projects, spend most of his time by ill-implementing the plans and finally leave office with the result that things were worse than before. Different from that tradition, Lula came into office, did mainly nothing, and can leave his office now with the pride of being one of most successful -- maybe the most successful -- Brazilian presidents of the past couple of decades.
Yet the recent happy phase of modern Brazilian history may be at risk if Dilma Rouseff, the candidate who is sponsored by Lula, were to win the presidency later this year. A Marxist at heart and endowed with stubbornness and a difficult character, things do no look too bright if she should win. In fact, all that has been accomplished over the past couple of years may be squandered again light-heartedly as it has happened so often in Brazil's history.
See Bloomberg report
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