As Growth Ebbs, Brazil Powers Up Its Bulldozers [How Marxists run economies into the ground]

New York Times ^ | June 21, 2012 | SIMON ROMERO

[Cincinatus' Wife]

IPOJUCA, Brazil — More than 40,000 laborers swarm the port complex here in northeast Brazil, building a refinery for the state oil company. Five thousand others toil at a shipyard, another government-led project. Real estate prices are soaring and unemployment is falling in this region along the Atlantic coast, once known for its festering poverty.

In a show of the extraordinary sway that Brazil’s government wields in nearly every important area of the economy, President Dilma Rousseff is accelerating an array of stimulus projects throughout the country aimed at blunting a slowdown that has reduced Brazil’s economic growth to a snail’s pace.

Ms. Rousseff’s assertiveness in enhancing the government’s role in molding economic policy is not wholly unlike China’s state-led investment, an increasingly popular model in the developing world. Brazil’s stimulus spending has helped preserve jobs, keeping unemployment at a historic low of 5.8 percent, down from 13 percent a decade ago. Months into a sharp slowdown, Ms. Rousseff’s approval ratings stand at more than 60 percent.

But in an echo of the debate about heavy government borrowing in the United States and Europe after the global downturn, Ms. Rouseff’s moves are starting to meet resistance in Brazil. Some experts fear that Brazil is becoming too dependent on government intervention to smooth the ups and downs of an economy that remains tied to commodity cycles; others fear that the creation of state-supported champions in the business world give the government even greater power to dictate policy shifts, potentially eroding Brazil’s exposure to market forces.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Obama's socialist playbook.

But communism NEVER works. Well worth the read.

Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff, Marxist urban guerrilla, welcomed to the White House by Barack Obama - March 2009.

[silverleaf]

Sounds like a lot of eco-friendly projects are underway in Brazil. Bulldoze it all and pave it- think of the jobs

sarc

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The bottom line - projects are left unfinished, people are being laid off and more money is going to come from where?

The state takes over private businesses, fires leadership and kills free market capitalism.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

[Black_Shark]

Hmm... Command economies using tools that were created by generally free market economies.

When has a command economy EVER been successful or innovative?

Stupid NYT