Word: brazill
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...disputes that the youngest President in Brazil's history -- he is 40 -- has shaken up his nation as has no other recent chief executive. Hurrying to create "O Brasil Novo," the new Brazil he promised during his campaign, he has reduced an 84% monthly inflation rate to less than 13%; axed some 100,000 employees from the government payroll; and begun to halt the destruction of the country's greatest resource, the Amazon rain forest...
Collor describes his goal in a phrase borrowed from the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes: "To win -- or to win." His long-distance vision is to boost Brazil from the Third to the First World, and he is convinced he can do it with a freer market, greater industrial efficiency and a leaner bureaucracy. Certainly, Brazil's potential is enormous. It has immense rivers and forests, rich agricultural lands, huge deposits of gold, gems, petroleum, iron ore and minerals. With a gross domestic product of $350 billion and annual exports of $34 billion, it is Latin America's most developed nation...
...alongside that highly industrialized Brazil lives another, desperately poor country where 70% of the 150 million citizens live in poverty. That is the legacy of the chronic overspending that began in the 1970s when military rulers borrowed heavily from Western banks to cope with spiraling petroleum prices and to finance an ambitious industrial expansion scheme. By the time Collor took office, Brazil was saddled with a $115 billion foreign debt. Interest payments to foreign commercial banks were stopped last July. Chaos loomed as the economy zoomed into hyperinflation, with prices rising at a rate of more than 100,000% annually...
...activity and dropped inflation to 3.29% in April. Collor also announced the immediate abolition of two dozen state agencies and said he would sell off most state-owned industries. In addition, he called for massive public-sector layoffs and higher taxes. The cruzado novo was replaced by the cruzeiro, Brazil's fourth currency in four years...
...same time, Collor reversed a long-standing government policy that treated the Amazon basin principally as a source of wood products and a locale for development. He declared that he would work vigorously to stop the burning of the forest by ranchers and settlers, then appointed Brazil's foremost environmental activist, Jose Lutzenberger, to enforce the program. In an interview with TIME, Collor was unapologetic about the abrupt turnaround. "On questions of ecology, we have made a fundamental commitment to life," he said. "We have nothing to hide and nothing to explain...