******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
(To give you an idea of how fucked up Brazilian politics are, the Blairo
Maggi referred to below was elected governor of Matto Grosso as a
candidate of the Popular Socialist Party in 2003, a split from the CP.
This scumbag stated that he could care less about deforestation.)
FT, July 18, 2016 6:32 am
‘Brazillionaires: The Godfathers of Modern Brazil’, Alex Cuadros
Review by John Paul Rathbone
Brazillionaires: The Godfathers of Modern Brazil, by Alex Cuadros,
Profile, RRP£10.99; Spiegel & Grau, $28
Three years ago Dilma Rousseff gathered her cabinet for an emergency
meeting. The Brazilian president made a shocking announcement. “We are
going to have to steal less,” she told her ministers. “That can’t be
right,” one protested.
A few days earlier 2m Brazilians had taken to the streets in protest at
the lavish sums spent on World Cup and Olympic stadiums instead of
public services. “I didn’t say stop stealing . . . just slow down,” Ms
Rousseff told her team. The lawmakers agreed they would be able to steal
“retroactively” to compensate.
The meeting, of course, did not happen; it was a spoof posted on YouTube
by comedy troupe Porta dos Fundos and viewed about 9m times.
Nevertheless, it is an apt summary of Alex Cuadros’s Brazillionaires — a
clear-eyed and often funny travelogue through the operatic lives of the
country’s ultra-wealthy and their baneful relationship with the state.
Brazil has had an extraordinary start to the century. Ten years ago, it
was feted as a country that could do no wrong. Poverty and inequality
were falling and businesses boomed.But the wheels have fallen off. The
country is mired in its worst ever recession.
Ms Rousseff faces impeachment proceedings for allegedly fiddling public
accounts. Meanwhile the Lava Jato, or “car wash”, probe into a $3bn
kickback scheme at Petrobras — the national energy company that was
chaired by Ms Rousseff before she became president — has resulted in the
arrest and jailing of several high-ranking businessmen and lawmakers.
Cuadros’s blend of memoir, exposé and historical narrative provides a
wonderful vehicle to explain how this state of affairs was reached. A
former reporter on Bloomberg’s “billionaire reporting team”, he does
this by going to the heart of the matter: money.
Kickbacks and state patronage have been an inherent part of Brazilian
business since at least the 19th century, when the Viscount of Mauá —
the “Rothschild of South America” — amassed a $60m fortune in banking
and infrastructure. Mauá saw himself as the vanguard of a great national
transformation. He believed enlightened self-interest was the driver of
prosperity. He also often confused his own interests with those of the
public.
Such delusions persist to this day. They can be seen in the way
construction companies such as Odebrecht — Marcelo Odebrecht, the former
chief executive, has been jailed for corruption — creamed off public
works contracts. “Odebrecht’s interests are in Brazil’s interests,” as a
company spokesman tells Cuadros. It can be seen in the backhanded
compliment often paid to the politicians who are the counterpart to such
deals: “Rouba, mas faz” — he steals but gets things done.
It can be heard in the words of Blairo Maggi,the soya producer awarded
the Greenpeace “golden chainsaw” while governor of the almost deforested
Mato Grosso state. Cuadros asks Mr Maggi if he sees any conflict between
being a policymaker and an agribusiness tycoon. “Absolutely not,” is his
confident reply.
It can even be seen in the figure of Jorge Paulo Lemann, head of 3G
Capital and Brazil’s richest man. Mr Lemann is renowned for his puritan
work ethic and tight cost control (“Costs are like finger nails; they
always have to be cut”). But his companies have also enjoyed billions of
dollars in cheap loans from BNDES, the state development bank.
Such cosy arrangements are not unique to Brazil. After all, it was an
American, Charles Erwin Wilson, who said: “What was good for our country
was good for General Motors and vice versa.” The promise of Lava Jato,
though, is that it may end them.
Some of the leaked secret recordings from the investigation are every
bit as cynical as the Porta dos Fundos satire. Lava Jato may even bring
down the interim government that has replaced Ms Rousseff. No other
Brics country has judicial institutions with this much independence.
Cuadros knows the country too well to believe Lava Jato will change
affairs for good. His affectionate panorama of its wealth, power and
patronage shows why: almost everyone is implicated. “Brazil is not for
beginners,” as Tom Jobim, the composer, once warned. But Brazillionaires
is a useful and entertaining place to start.
The reviewer is the FT Latin America editor
_________________________________________________________
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at:
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com