Brazil rejects IMF line on capital controls

[Derechos]

Guido Mantega, Brazil’s finance minister, has stepped up rhetoric against expansionary monetary policy in developed nations and efforts by the International Monetary Fund to create a framework to guide the use of capital controls.

In a speech to a meeting of the IMF’s international financial and monetary committee, to be delivered on Saturday, Mr Mantega lays the blame for inflation, over-valued currencies, credit bubbles and other ills affecting emerging markets squarely at the feet of advanced economies.

“These measures of self-defence are a legitimate response to the effects of the monetary policies adopted by reserve currency-issuing countries,” Mr Mantega says in the speech, which was released ahead of the meeting – part of the IMF and World Bank’s semi-annual gatherings in Washington.

“Ironically, some of the countries that are responsible for the deepest crisis since the Great Depression, and have yet to solve their own problems, are eager to prescribe codes of conduct to the rest of the world.”

Over the past year, Latin America’s largest economy has become one of the most aggressive users of capital controls to curb the appreciation of its currency, the real, against the dollar, which it says hurts the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2b27eac2-677a-11e0-9138-00144feab49a.html#axzz1JsHfQTCM

[Jeneral2885]

1. No one in SA likes the IMF

Not after its failed policies in the 1980s and 90s

[Peace Patriot]

2. I'm glad to see Brazil holding the line against U.S.-spawned financial predators.

I wish our Democratic Party leaders were protecting our country and the great majority of our people as well but I'm afraid that our political system has ceased being capable of acting in our interests.

The Lula da Silva/Dilma Rousseff administration in Brazil took a stand against U.S./"first world" corporate bullying and rapine early on--way back during the WTO meeting in Cancun (2003), when it led a 20-country walkout in protest of unfair, undemocratic market "fixing" in favor of "first world" corporate interests. (For instance, U.S. Big Ag, protected and subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, would dump, say, cheap powdered milk on the market in Jamaica, destroying the local dairy industry--wiping out small family businesses and generations of agricultural expertise). Brazil's leaders have continued to side with the poor majority in Brazil and in the region--for instance, defending Bolivia's sovereignty and its elected leftist government from the U.S.-instigated white separatist insurrection in 2008 by, among other things, using its clout as Bolivia's chief gas customer (the white separatists wanted to secede, taking Bolivia's gas reserves with them), and allying with Hugo Chavez on a "raise all boats" program within their countries and in the region.

The corporate press hasn't bothered to mention it, but Venezuela recently earned designation as "THE most equitable country in Latin America" on income distribution (by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean). Venezuela was the pioneer on anti-poverty, pro-worker policy and, when it was joined by Brazil--with Lula's election in 2002--seeing to the interests of the vast poor majority of Latin America became regional policy.

If South America continues on this path of cooperation and "raising all boats"--and, not incidentally--throwing off U.S. rule--this will be "South America's century." They have the vast natural resources, and the democratically energized and motivated work force--increasingly educated and "boot-strapped" by leftist policy--to far outstrip the corporate-looted U.S. in economic growth--and this leftist democracy movement in Latin America also has a strong environmental component to it, led by the Indigenous in countries like Bolivia and Ecuador (both of which recently included the right to Mother Nature to exist and prosper apart from human needs and desires in their constitutions, i.e., as "the law of the land").

South America is like us 50 years ago, in the 1950s-1960s-- capable of creating a great and equitable democratic civilization. Our chance was blown, first by the war profiteers (Vietnam, et al), then by the traitorous Reaganites--looting of the Savings & Loans, busting of unions, re-write of the progressive tax code to favor the rich, wild "defense" spending--with the coup de grace inflicted by the Bush Junta--all of the above and much worse, including, very importantly, the privatization of our vote counting system with corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' code-infested voting machines. The first and most important key to the rise of leftist "New Deal"-type governments in Latin America has been honest, transparent elections. We have lost that here and that loss has ruined us as an equitable, democratic, prosperous country and the "leader of the free world." With transparent elections, we could have changed course. Without them, we can't. That is WHY "trade secret" code vote counting was introduced in Oct '02 (the same month as the Iraq War Resolution).