I feel obliged to respond to the criticism of Cardoso.
This aspect of what he's done,
> He offered the observation that Brazilian
> interest rates are twice as high as those of the countries with the
> next highest rates in support of the notion that on this matter Cardoso
> is applying an extreme version of the model.
should come as no surprize to anyone the least bit familiar with Brazil's
historical problems with inflation. Considering that Cardoso decided
to do what he could working within the system, he had to work with the
Brazil that he inherited. (If one would criticize him for failure to be
another Mao or Che, then that's another matter.) Those on the left who
think that inflation is merely a bourgeois concern apparently haven't
considered how hard it is on the poor -- to have the value of what little
money they're able to scrape together drop in value when already they
are just barely getting by at the sheer margin of subsistence. It is
because of inflation that Brazil has had to change its currency so often,
lopping off three orders of magnitude every few years or so from its
basic unit of exchange (be it the Cruzeiro, the Crusado, the Crusado II,
or whatever).
Bill Haller
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Bill Haller ^ University Center for
Department of Sociology ^ Social and Urban Research
University of Pittsburgh ^ 121 University Place
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 ^ Pittsburgh, PA 15260
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