It’s awesome that they stopped the downward spiral but it’s not like under Lula they were moving in the right direction:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/08/brazil-president-lula-devastation-bill-law-environment
They just move in the wrong direction slower.
Transcript:
Brazil in a fabulous shirt and white linen pants leans back with hands in pockets nonchalantly.
Brazil: Beautiful morning, isn’t it?
Chile on hands and knees getting tear gassed and beaten
Venezuela on hands and knees cleaning the floors for Trump America
Argentina sitting on a porch wearing ragged clothing
Argentina: Spectacular
Brazilian comment should be in Portuguese that would be read by Spanish speakers really easi. “Hermosa manhã, verdade?”
*Linda manhã não acha?
Using verdade like that sounds really weird in portuguese
Some places use “verdade” this way.
Good to see Bolsonaro put down, even if Milei is still doing neo-liberal/libertarian cuts in Argentina.
Milei has at least shown that you can lower inflation and still be poor. Lower inflation is meaningless unless you distribute the wealth/benefits better.
As for Chile, can we stop putting women up against far-right men? It just doesn’t seem to work.
Distributed wealth is also meaningless under hyperinflation.
I don´t know what the answer is, but the clucking about Milei from the left seems short-sighted and self-serving.
To me, it doesn’t matter as long as poverty gets under control. Milei’s therapy of shock killed the patient, now it’s not sick anymore.
Lowering inflation and distributing the wealth in such a way that avoids giving too much power back to those who were causing the inflation is probably the rightest answer. In the case of Argentina the damage was in part due to currency devaluation being used as the main economic lever by previous administrations.
I think macro-economics is just complicated, and one can’t be too political about it.
I think only certain economists understood this. Keynes for instance. I think modern monetary theory (at it’s best) can also be apolitical. I’d say for the left, when to make cuts and efficiency reforms is their blind spot (pro-market, pro-economic behaviors), for the right it’s when to spend in a way that benefits society’s growth as a whole (not just the biggest/wealthiest sections).
Finding leaders competent enough to do both dispassionately and at the right times is the difficulty.
Also, poorly distributed wealth leads to corruption and inflation.
This is partially because taxes are deflationary (taking money out of the cycle), and rich people love to dodge their taxes. They also love to price gouge the poor (accelerating inflation), and they love to buy luxuries and over spend on stuff… Especially things like realestate. This drives up bidding/prices… Inflates prices if you will.
A lot of this behavior comes back to their tax dodging. See they don’t like to have an income, instead they like to borrow money from the banks pointing to asset wealth (particularly stocks) as their equity justifying banks giving them high loan amounts.
They the live off the borrowed money, stock prices fluctuate, they buy assets with their borrowed money… Then they talk up their stocks sell some of them, pay off their bank loans… Change banks, point to their assets, give themselves more stocks in their own companies as bonuses, or end of year rewards… Take out more loans, live off more debts, buy more assets…ect ect…
All to avoid paying thier fair share. To price gouge people, to drive up realestate and other prices …well none the less to say that larger wealth disparities can contribute to inflation. Which is why fair distribution and taxation are important.
He used Fernando Henrique’s manual to how to reduce inflation. But then he threw the manual away and didn’t notice that it only worked in Brazil because FHC was a socialist.
And Cuba’s next if Generalissimo Rubio has any say in it. He has some big shoes to fill.
