Brazil's Lula Turns to the Economic Left

Brazil's president turns to the left. From the magazine issue dated Nov 2, 2009 With one eye on posterity and the other on the ballot box, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been tacking sharply left. Brasília is spending public money with abandon, hiking pensions, public-sector wages, and the minimum wage all at a rate way above inflation—exactly the brand of checkbook populism that Lula had previously avoided and that has kept so many Latin nations in the minor leagues. In a bid to tighten control over the economy, he has called for the state to take over drilling operations in the vast new offshore oilfields and publicly threatened to interfere in Vale, a privately run mining conglomerate. Now, in a heavy-handed message to the markets, the finance ministry has slapped a 2 percent tax on foreign investment in... [read full story]                    

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