President Dilma Rousseff was finally toppled down today. Yes, it’s a coup, different in nature to the previous ones (last in Brazil was in 1964), but with the same consequences. I have discussed the nature of the process here, here, here, and here (this last more on the economy, from last year) before. It is a coup that has received discrete support from the US government, by the way, as much as the elected neoliberal government of Macri in Argentina (Obama visited the latter, a government that basically tries to vindicate the last and genocidal dictatorship in Argentina).
A good summary of the mess is available here. Important things to remember: she is NOT implicated in corruption (contrary to Fernando Collor that was impeached in 1992, so that was NOT a coup), and even if one has qualms about the fiscal transfers (“pedaladas”) that are the formal cause for the impeachment (and one shouldn’t really, since these are not crimes of responsibility, or crimes at all), it’s not even clear that she violated the rules by which she was overthrown. Note that the worse that can actually be said, and it was repeated ad nauseam by the opposition, is that she lied during the campaign. And she did. She promised a government against bankers and for the people, with expansion of social expenditures, and did a u-turn, and delivered the neoliberal policies that the opposition was requesting.
What comes next is more of the same neoliberal policies that are spreading throughout the continent, support for free trade, privatization, including cuts to social security, lower real wages, fiscal adjustment, and more unemployment. The economic collapse of the last year and half is far from over.
Originally published at Naked Keynesianism.
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