Customer Reviews

Brazil Under Cardoso (Americas Society & CIDAC Publications)

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This book is, above all, an eulogy made by a group of American academics with a conservative frame of mind of Cardoso's first term of government and his policies of privatization, de-regulamentation, social psending budget-cuts, and all other such pieces of IMF-favoured economic orthodoxy. Given the fact that: (1) just after the book was published, the Brazilian economy was hit by an speculative attack on the Real that sent it lingering during 1999;(2) despite the quick recovery attained, Brazil managed to increse her per capita income during Cardoso's rule at a smaller rate then during the already crisis-ridden 80s;(3) that the major ills of the Brazilian society (land and income concentration, deep destitution, rampant urban crime) remain untouched after Cardoso's 5 years in office - perhaps the authors should allow me not to be as positively impressed as they are (or were). This book is, however, a fine subject of study as a piece of ideological thinking.