Crisis, Public Debt and Financialization of the Brazilian Economy.

Beginning with an analysis of the global context of substitution of monetarist for developmentalist ideology, this paper examines the crisis phenomena and capitalist reconstruction that contributed to the financial expansion of the Brazilian economy. Its central hypothesis is that this process occurred in a context of reorganization of economic relations, in which the state's role was fundamental despite the neoliberal discourse. Actually, efforts to restore the profits of classes whose incomes were reduced by welfare policies were subjacent to this discourse. In Brazil, the neoliberal ideology started to be consolidated in the mid-1990s, with the Real Plan as its landmark. In addition to inflation control, the plan aimed at attracting capital that was circulating globally in search of better investment possibilities. Reproducing the historical connection between capitalism and state, a financial expansion of the Brazilian economy also occurred under this association, in which public debt was the great engine. If public debt is not concrete in a strict economic sense, it is concrete in its capacity to impose material restrictions on large social segments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]