Brazil’s President delivered his first big shot across the bow of the global financial interests who think they should rule the country, with a double-barreled attack on the financial markets and the Central Bank, in an interview with RedeTV on Feb. 2. President Lula da Silva condemned Brazil’s notorious income inequality, said that investors who “are earning too much” should instead concern themselves with “helping the economy to grow, not just that they grow,” and opened fire on the Central Bank for keeping the benchmark interest rate at its current usurious annual 13.75%. He even threatened that the “independence” of the central bank might have to be reviewed before the end of 2024.
This isn’t theory, Lula made clear. The hunger in this country makes me indignant, he told his interviewer. When I walk down Sao Paulo’s main avenue, Faria Lima, “everyone is pretty, with a suit and tie, everyone with air conditioning, making a lot of money, shouting in the Stock Market. And then when I go by Roosevelt Square, I see people involved in drugs, with crack, hungry. I see people begging; I see children begging…. That is what bothers me.”
The “markets” hit back; stocks and the value of Brazil’s currency, the real, fell the next day. Leading oligarchic daily O Estado de São Paulo titled its Feb. 4 editorial: “Lula Doesn’t Measure His Words, But He Should,” and warned that if he did not, he would face political and “market” problems. O Estado’s first complaint was against Lula’s proposal to seek peace for Ukraine and Russia. Second was that he dared question the markets, and had attacked the Central Bank and questioned its autonomy.
