Word: lula
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There may be another miracle in the making. Because unfettered capitalism is widely blamed for the global meltdown, economists and laborers alike say Brazil has become an example of what Lula likes to call "the financial strategy of the future." By that he means a postideological approach that is equal parts wealth creation for corporations such as Embraer and wealth redistribution for underdogs like Da Silva. All this under the kind of prudent financial regulation that seems to have gone missing in the developed world of late...
...dysfunctional, its political system squalid, corruption endemic. But consider: 53% of Brazil's 190 million people now occupy the middle class, up from 42% in 2002. This increased social mobility happened at the same time the country's main stock index soared some 480% before last fall's downturn. Lula seems to have cracked Latin America's chronic conundrum: how to expand underachieving economies while reducing epic inequality. In so doing, he's created a model that's "an insurance ticket, not a lottery ticket," says Marcelo Neri, head of the Center for Social Policies in Rio de Janeiro...
...interview last fall at the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, Lula, 63, told TIME that he wants to "change the world's political and economic geography" before he leaves office in December 2010. It may be futile to stump for a permanent Brazilian seat on the United Nations Security Council, but the developed world's financial shambles has made Lula's campaign to challenge U.S. and European hegemony in global trade talks less quixotic - and enhanced Brazil's leadership role among developing nations. "Capitalism will be a different animal once the turbulence is over," Lula told TIME. "Developing countries will...
Twenty years ago, when Lula was a firebrand unionist, that sentiment might have been dismissed as dreamy rhetoric. Not today. However the crisis ends, there is widespread agreement that developing economies such as Brazil, China and India will be crucial to ensuring that demand remains buoyant. Lula, too, has changed. These days he's a pragmatist who is as popular inside corporate boardrooms as he is in the favelas. On March 17, he will meet new U.S. President Barack Obama - a fellow moderate liberal who shares Lula's passion for green-energy ventures - in the White House. He will...
That too would mark a change. Brazilian officials have long wanted to make a mark outside their neighborhood, but until recently, the world rarely noticed what went on there - unless it involved beaches, soccer or Carnaval. "Brazil always suffered externally because of its internal poverty," says Lula's foreign-policy adviser, Marco Aurelio Garcia. The nation's founding monarchy, which lasted until 1889, insulated the country from the region's 19th century upheavals but also spawned a quasi-feudal class system that led to the inequalities that persist today. In 2000, fewer than 3% of Brazilians still owned more than...