Jorge W Arbusto

[Gość: Tysprowda]

American presidents all mixed up

In a bizarre twist, global bankers love Lula and despair of Bush

Richard Adams
Wednesday January 29, 2003
The Guardian

It's surprising that no one has noticed this, but it looks as if there has
been a terrible mix-up involving American presidents.
For some time there have been suggestions that US president George Bush
doesn't know what's he is doing. The answer is simple: he's supposed to be
the president of Brazil.

Meanwhile, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - or Lula, as the new president of
Brazil is known - should be president of the United States. The mix-up is
obvious, when you consider the facts.

Wealthy oligarchs, who reach high office through nepotism, promoting friends
of their family into government while presiding over corporate sleaze, and
running up vast debts by making tax giveaways to their rich, rightwing
supporters - that's the sort of behaviour that South American presidents are
renowned for.

Meanwhile, policies of stern fiscal prudence, applauded by the international
financial markets, coupled with tough welfare reform, is what is expected
from leaders of the United States.

But in a bizarre geo-political twist, these stereotypes have been turned on
their heads. While the president of South America's most important country
couldn't be more different as a person than the president of North America's
most important country, it's hard not to think the world would be a better
place if the two men swapped jobs.

The irony is that during the 2000 US presidential election, the difference
between Bush and Democrat candidate Al Gore was so slim that the pair were
mocked as "Gush and Bore".

Coming from a conservative background and party, Bush was supposed to stick
to the status quo of balanced budgets and a strong US currency inherited from
the Clinton administration. Few analysts - if any - thought Bush's narrow
victory would make any difference to the way the US economy was run.

Lula's election was far less auspicious, preceded by dire warnings of
economic meltdown - although no one accused the populist former union leader
as being indistinguishable from Jose Sera, his technocrat opponent.

A one-time trade union radical from Brazil's huge working class, who had run
for the Brazilian presidency four times, Lula's election was treated with
dismay. He was said to be a firebrand leftwinger who would destroy the
stability that Brazil has enjoyed since the pragmatismo policies of the
previous administration, headed by Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Yet since his election, Lula's policies have met with praise from the bankers
that rule the financial markets. Brazil was dragged down by Argentina's
economic implosion last year, but since Lula's victory, Brazil's currency,
the real, has made a remarkable recovery on world markets. At the same time,
the interest rate on Brazilian government debt has halved since before Lula's
election in November, as bankers have started regarding the country as a
lower risk.

While Bush talked a good game about "leaving no child behind" as president,
Lula has made social welfare reform his centrepiece, to help balance his
government's budget and lower interest rates.

Policy is moving in the opposite direction under Bush. The US dollar has sunk
to its weakest levels since his election, while the economy continues to
splutter along - despite the US central bank pumping out cheap money at a
rapid rate.

Bush's answer to the weak economy has been to reach back to the
discredited "trickle down" supply-side policies of Ronald Reagan, and hand
out huge tax cuts to the wealthy - exactly the sort of policies that his own
father, George Bush the elder, memorably described as "voodoo economics".

Throughout his election campaign in 2000, Bush regularly pledged to balance
the government's budget. Instead, in the words of economist Paul Krugman, the
US government "faces the prospect of large deficits as far as the eye can
see".

Bush is offering tax cuts that will cost over $600bn (£380bn), with more than
half the benefits going to the wealthy, those making more than $200,000
(£125,000) a year. Of that sum, $150bn is to go to the very wealthy - those
making more than $1m a year.

But the most obvious reason that George Bush should swap Washington for
Brasilia is that it suits him better. Bush spends so much time trying to deny
his blue-blood, Ivy League-educated background, by posing as a man of the
people - slipping off to work on his Texas ranch, wearing cowboy hats,
driving a pick-up.

Lula, on the other hand, grew up in abject poverty near Sao Paulo, selling
peanuts and working as a shoeshine boy. He is a real man of the people - and
in an ideal world would be in the White House.

Of course it also means Brazil ends up with George Bush. But then Jorge
Arbusto, as he would be known, might quite enjoy life up the rugged Amazon.
Whether the people of Brazil want him is another matter.