Brazil: It’s a depression, it was not a recession

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to characterize the current Brazilian economic situation and make its datation. Nowadays, Brazil has the main characteristics of the depressions of the 1870s and 1930s. During those events there was a sharp fall in output, a high unemployment rate and a prolonged insufficiency of demand. Brazil, since the end of 2013 and during the year 2014, presented the first signs of a recession that could slide off into depression. By 2015, it plunged into depression. Depression is an abnormal condition of an economy. A recession would be a normal economic condition.