Polemic: Lula's White Blue-Eyed Bankers

Last Thursday 26 March during a visit of British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva blamed the rich countries for the crisis.

"The crisis was caused by irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who in the past seemed to know everything, and now show no knowledge at all", said Lula in reference to foreign speculators in the first world countries.
When asked by a journalist whether his statement would not have an ideological bias, Lula said: "As I do not know any black or indigenous banker [...] I can only say that it is impossible that the part of mankind, which is the worst victim, shall pay for this crisis. This is not possible," he added.
”We can not allow the poor to be the first to pay the bill run up by the rich," he emphasized.

During his statement to the press, at the Alvorada Palace (the Brazilian White House), with the visiting British Prime-Minister at his side, the president compared the financial crisis to a fever and also defended the actions of the government as inducer and articulator of policy.

“It is usually said that the government only is a hindrance, and when the crisis happened, those who seemed to be the “gods of the economy”, seek that same “non-knowledgeable” government, to save them.“

And continued to defend regulations for the international financial system, by saying: "It is not possible to have a society where you enter a shopping mall or an airport without being filmed, always being watched, and the financial system is not monitored and has no regulations."

Lula said that the global economic crisis will worsen if the G-20 meeting in London in April does not submit concrete initiatives to recover the global economy.

"If the G-20 is just a meeting to mark another meeting, we will be discredited and the crisis may worsen".

Lula questions the effectiveness of the economic package presented by the President of the United States, Barack Obama, which provides for USD 1 trillion for the purchase of assets considered "toxic”.
"If Obama made the decision in the best interest to the United States. Great. I hope it works," he said "but I can not use the little money we have left, to buy titles that I call “rotten”," he added.

He stated also that he hopes that Obama, in the G-20 meeting in London, presents a plan as the views of the American president are supreme and must be respected.

Note:
AmericaBlog's “Chris in Paris” writes in his post "Lula and Berlusconi need therapy":
"The last time I checked, disgraced but wealthy Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O'Neal is African-American....." and contests Lula's words. Clearly he doesn't understand the language and the way-of-thinking in developing countries and doesn't know how the people living in these countries see AND experience daily the Americans living in their countries.
Lula's words had nothing to do with racism or discrimination, but everything with the cold truth as the big speculators (including bankers) of the USA created the mess the US and the world are in, in the first place and the European bankers ran into this pit out of greed too. Have you heard of any 'coloured' bank in Latin America which needed bail-out money? Brazilian banks proved to be sound. So, Lula is right, it were the "white, blue-eyed bankers" and it is of no importance that by any coincidence there was somewhere, sometime a 'black banker'.
Lula's words, blunt as they came from his infamous big mouth, are however correct. The poor, developing and emerging countries are suffering most, thanks to the insatiable greed of the white, blue-eyed bankers of the rich countries.
A sore blogpost. Better read the text in the original language first, before starting to shoot. Incredible that in general you attack the main stream media and now use their words as basis for your blog. A blogpost not worthy the slogan: "A Great Nation Deserves The Truth". It is not Lula who needs therapy, the white, blue-eyed bankers (speculators as Lula said) in the US and Europe need it most and urgently as well, as they don’t seem to be inclined to change their attitude. So don’t blame Lula without knowing what you are talking about.

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Lula, the great world leader

This is a translation of a post written by my fellow blogger: Wanderley Filho

One of Lula's ambitions is to be recognized as a major world leader, a leader with a recognition which equals Nelson Mandela, for example. This wish seems to be promoted constantly by his assistants. In the midst of this illusion of greatness, some nonsense takes form as ridiculous proposals and end up as a mockery of Brazil.

Lula has already proposed the “World Zero Hunger" program, which should be financed by taxes levied on international arms trade; he said also that he would re-establish the geopolitics (he loves that word) of this planet with bio-diesel; that the countries of the G-20, led by Brazil, will dethrone the countries of the G-8 at the moment of creating of a new global economy and that the victories of the leftist parties in Latin America, starting with his own, had paved the way for the election of Barack Obama in the USA. At the height of arrogance towards its destiny as a world leader, Lula revealed that even God, in transit in Brazil, had decided to remain there to help him.

With the same modesty, Lula pretends, which many diplomatic delegation of the world already had done, to resolve the discord, which is the base of the current conflict in the Gaza Strip between Islamic terrorists and Israel. The extract below was published on the website of Folha Online:

"I sent Celso Amorim [Minister of Foreign Affairs] to the Middle East in order to tell them that Brazil is interested in active participation, so that finally a path to peace can be established in that area, in that geographic area of the world. (...) The existence of two states is quite possible, that there will be diplomatic relations, that there can be development, that there is improvement and I think that the Palestinian people deserve this opportunity."

Wow! Things are so simple that no one realized how easy it is to solve that first seemed insoluble. Brazil is not even able to maintain order in its favela regions of Rio de Janeiro, dominated by drug traffickers who forced the legal government out of the region. Every year, there are 50 thousand Brazilians murdered, a number much larger than that of the war in Iraq, for example. But Lula knows how peace in the Middle East can be achieved. This borders on the ridiculous. Or rather, it's ridiculous.

[With a paraphrase of one of Lula's famous sayings:]
Never before on this planet a "world leader" was as insignificant.

Source: Lula, o grande lider mundial
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Lula and the Financial Crisis

Apart from other things, Lula is famous for his blundering utterances in public.

Since the financial crisis in the U.S. started to worsen, president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva changed his tone.

March 30, 2008: "Bush, my son, solve your crisis."

September 17, 2008: "What crisis? Ask Bush."

September 22, 2008: "Until now, thank God, the crisis has not crossed the Atlantic."

September 29, 2008: "For Brazil, if it comes close, it will be very minimal."

One day later:
September 30, 2008: "The crisis is very serious and so intense that we do not yet know the magnitude of it."

October 4, 2008: "There [in the USA], the crisis is a tsunami. Here, if it reaches us, it will be a marolinha (high wave), not even good enough for surfing."

cartoon: J. Bosco in O Liberal

October 5, 2008: "We want this issue of the crisis presented to Congress."

November 8, 2008 opening the G20 meeting in São Paulo: ”Nobody is safe and all countries will be affected by the crisis.”

During the São Paulo G20-summit (one week before the summit of heads of state in New York), ministers of finance and presidents of the central banks, discussed measures against the financial crisis that began in the United States. The group intended to rally forces to get more influence over the direction of the global economy. In his openings speech, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that the crisis is serious, requires coordinated actions, and that no country in the world will be spared.
Lula also said that the G7 countries - the United States, France, Italy, Germany, UK, Canada and Japan - no longer are in a position to lead the direction of the world economy solely. He called for more participation by emerging countries arguing that in 2007 these countries accounted for 75% of the growth of the world economy.

’The crisis is global and requires global solutions also. It is time for a pact between governments for the creation of a new global financial architecture.” he said.

For the world press assembled in São Paulo the G20-summit was a nightmare. Due to a failure of the press service, journalists from around the world could not hear Lula’s speech.
While the president gave his speech at the Hilton Hotel, the journalists were confined in a room of the Hyat Hotel, at a short distance of the Hilton, where the meeting took place. All should be watching the speech by Lula via a tv-screen, but the screen did not work.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the transmission system of the NBR failed and the journalists were unable to follow Lula’s speech.
”It is a shame, it is a shame,” shouted the foreign journalists accompanying the meeting of the G20.
Nevertheless the summit was the perfect moment for all who, often only preaching to empty pews, resisted the "neo-liberal" free market economic model highflying in the past few decades. Politicians, economists and social activists want to take advantage of the current financial crisis to bury this model once and for all, together with all forms of speculation.

Since the beginning of the crisis, President Lula gradually changed the tone regarding the crisis in the global financial system and its consequences in Brazil. Apparently the crisis came unexpected, with a huge foreign capital outflow that took both the government and the private sector by surprise. It generated mistrust between banks which stopped lending money.
In a clear change of behaviour, the government and its economic team finally began to realise the seriousness of the problem, that Brazilian companies had with derivatives - bets on the recovery (over-valorisation) of the real - and the over-optimism of President Lula, who came to say that the crisis of Bush would not reach the country.

Some internal contradictions within governments, especially between Central Banks and Economy Ministries, are becoming more acute. In Brazil, the dominance of the monetary authority (the Central Bank) suffered a blow when emergency measures were needed to avoid a greater economic slowdown.

The G20 summit in São Paulo - Minister of Finance Guido Mantega and President Lula

The disagreement between Brazilian Minister of Finance Guido Mantega over the conservative policies of the Central Bank, which advocates high interest rates and an unrestricted floating exchange rate, was already common knowledge. But the crisis and the recommendations of the G20 strengthened Mantega's position. As chairman and spokesman of the meeting, he emphasised the need for anti-recession measures.
The president of the Central Bank, Henrique Meirelles, tried to soft-pedal this approach, underlining instead the concerns over inflation that were also expressed in the meeting’s final communiqué, and the special characteristics of each country.

The G20 summit in São Paulo - president Lula and the CB president Henrique Meirelles

Walking and talking between two fires Lula said that despite the financial crisis Brazil will maintain all works in progress of the Programa de Aceleração de Crescimento (PAC = Program for Accelerated Growth). The president said that the global financial crisis not caught Brazil unprepared and promised that the government will not allow that the country's economic growth will be hampered. "My government and the people have made sacrifices and are now beginning to reap the rewards ... with our expanded home market, which protects us partly of the international crisis," said Lula. "The government will not allow our growth compromised," added the president.

Former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso criticized the way Lula’s government was facing the economic crisis and was ironic, calling Lula a "great economist", in reference to the statements Lula made by calling the crisis a marolinha when coming to Brazil.

“No need to be aggressive with anyone personally, but we have to say that not everything the master is saying, is right, because it is not. We have to say the king is naked here, there, and yonder. Put your clothes on, Mr. President. Do not talk nonsense, Mr. President. Be more consistent with your history. Don’t be as fast in your judgments as the others. Note that a nation is made in the course of generations. Don’t be so pretentious. Be a little more humble,” completed Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

The former president said that people realize when things are not going well.
”I understand that the president have to animate the country. But the country is not silly. The country understands when things change. Things have changed in the world, changed for the worse. It is cyclical? It is momentary? Yeah, but we have to be able to view the future to leave the ruinous situation we are in and don’t continue saying that it is not ruinous. It is ruinous."

But after all nothing really changes. All governments in the world are implementing stimulus programs, not so in Brazil. Apparently the Lula’s statement that all-works-in-progress of the Programa de Aceleração de Crescimento (PAC = Program for Accelerated Growth) will continue is, in Lula’s opinion, sufficient enough alongside the high level interest rates and (disputable) interventions of the Central Bank in the exchange market, selling its stock of dollars to keep the real over-valorised, in favour of the banks, disgracing the products manufacturing segment.

President Lula planting an aroeira tree

sources: UltimoSegundo, O Globo, IPSNews, J. Bosco/O Liberal

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