Brazilian politics

[gusl]

Pity the Brazilian Voter is a very good summary of Brazilian politics. Main points:
* most parties have no ideologies, as can be seen by the alliances
* no party is very concerned about lowering taxes

In my opinion, the most serious problems in Brazil are:
* starting a business is very hard because interest rates are ridiculous. If banking were deregulated, private bankers could make lots of money. (Btw, do credit givers anywhere ever make personalized investigations, in order to assess someone's credit-worthiness? I think anti-discrimination laws tend to get in the way of this.)
* taxes are way too complex.
* Corruption exists at all levels, and is accepted as part of the culture. Meritocracy is far behind Friendocracy.

By the way, Brazilian government bonds are probably a good investment.

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I also like this piece: World Cup brings Out the Best and Worst in Brazil.

Comments

personalized investigations

[http://users.livejournal.com/_greg/]

Some Islamic banks become partners in your business, or assist you in finding partner-investors. Partners share the risk and are therefore very interested in checking everything out thoroughly and ongoingly.

The Grameen bank created the model where each applicant for investment had to find four others who would guarantee their success. Only when the first applicant had proved themselves could the next applicant in the group receive their investment, etc. The results were (1) overhead so low they could offer very small loans to poor people with (2) extraordinarily good payback rates.

With politics and economics there are always well-proven models with all of the desired characteristics. One must identify the (sometimes hidden) attachments to the failing models before one can create a transition plan.

_Greg