Latin America: Changing political realities and trends 2000–2014

Abstract

The United States took longer to realize that a weak State does not generate a strong market. They needed the brutal financial crisis of 2008 to wake up.¹ With this striking headline Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira began his opinion editorial published in mid-June 2011 in the solidly respectable and centrist Brazilian newspaper \textit{O Folha de São Paulo} . Bresser Pereira was commenting on a news story supplied by the newspaper’s Washington correspondent, suggesting that President Barack Obama intended to ‘create a bank similar to the BNDES [Brazilian Economic and Social Development Bank]’ in order to finance transportation, energy and sanitation projects