Word: caf
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Wobbly Leg. President Café Filho is well aware that all his problems did not originate with the Vargas regime. Even before Vargas, Brazil had embarked on the slow, painful transition from an agricultural economy based on production for export to a diversified economy based on production for domestic use. The pattern of Brazil's economic past is a series of wonderful one-product export booms, invariably followed by abysmal busts. First came a 16th century boom in a red dyewood called pau-braza (literally, ember wood), which gave Brazil its name. In the 17th century Brazil became...
...Professor's Prospects. To harness runaway inflation, Café Filho tabbed as his Finance Minister one of the nation's top economists: urbane Eugenio Gudin, 68, professor at the University of Brazil. To Gudin's way of thinking, nationalism ranks with inflation as an obstacle to Brazil's healthy economic growth. But for the time being, the administration can do little about nationalism except refrain from encouraging it. The administration's common-sense policy on the Petrobras oil law is to let it stand until nationalistic sentiment subsides, and get as much foreign participation...
...slow inflation, Gudin called for cruzeiro-pinching by the government, curbs on bank credit and tax reform. The two preceding Finance Ministers also drew up disinflationary programs, but inflation kept right on. What makes Gudin's prospects sounder is that President Café Filho is backing him up. Getulio Vargas failed to back up his men, Horacio Lafer and Oswaldo Aranha. While Lafer was tightening credit, the Bank of Brazil was loosening it; while Aranha was trying to curb prices, Vargas decreed a 100% increase in minimum wages...
...Road to Tomorrow. Even more important for Brazil in the long run than Cafe Filho's economic program is the educational effect of his own character and his new kind of administration. Besides providing a conspicuous personal example of candor and integrity, Café Filho is giving Brazil a government that is opposed to nationalism and favoritism, that is trying to work out the country's problems instead of conjuring them away. Said a member of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies: "Café Filho is setting a much-needed example. He is proving that an honest...
With little more than a year ahead of him, Café Filho cannot be expected to cover much distance. "I do not expect my administration to go down as a milestone in the history of Brazil," he said recently. "I shall be fully satisfied if it is remembered as a bridge to better times." And if Café Filho can hold the world's biggest republic in the direction he has set, his administration will indeed deserve to be written down as a serviceable bridge along the road to Brazil's splendid tomorrow...