Angela Merkel & Dilma Rousseff. Peter Hauser/Demotix. All rights reserved.The scene is that of a family dinner. The parents and the children are gathered around the table for one of the most sacred moments in Brazilian family life. But suddenly, there is no food in the pans. The plates disappear and they are left devastated. We then turn to another room where bankers are shamelessly having a meal. The message is: this is what will happen if Marina Silva wins the election. She will grant power to the banks, and this will mean a return to neoliberalism. This is just one example of Dilma Rousseff’s vicious campaign against the two main opposition candidates. Lula’s heiress won the election and gave the Workers Party (PT) its fourth consecutive term at the helm of Brazil’s federal government.
A year after the campaign propaganda, the country is going through a severe economic crisis, as shown by projections predicting a 2 percent fall in GDP in 2015. The dollar hovers around R$ 4.00, a historical record, while inflation is close to 10 percent per year. The government has reacted with a fiscal adjustment and cuts in pension payments, workers’ rights, public spending and social services – which is exactly the same austerity prescription that Dilma attributed to the opposition during the campaign. Joaquín Levy, the Minister of Finance, is a Bradesco bank executive and a Chicago School monetarist neoliberal. This is a serious crisis but, to give just an example, the profits of Banco Itaú in 2015 have grown by R$ 6 billion per quarter, which is a 25percent increase in a year. In the same period, the base interest rate set by the government has risen four consecutive times, reaching 14.25 percent. In capitalism, the traditional response to a crisis is to save the banks and socialize the losses.
What happened between the elections and Dilma’s inauguration in January? Economist Márcio Pochmann, who is close to the PT, would only say that “she changed strategy”. The "strategy" of adopting a neoliberal agenda, however, had already been outlined by former minister Guido Mantega. The government knew that there was a crisis and was already planning a fiscal squeeze for the following year. So, the government lied twice during the election campaign. First, when it denied that the economy was in trouble; second, when it attributed to its opponents the very policies that the PT was to adopt once the campaign was over. The government chose the lie as a method, and won.
