Neomonetarismo Tropical: A Experiência Brasileira nos Anos Noventa

Abstract

RESUMO Este artigo analisa o desempenho da economia brasileira durante os anos 90, à luz da mudança de política neomonetarista implementada de maneira desigual, mas incremental, ao longo desta década. O artigo mostra que essa mudança de política foi associada a, e contribuiu para, uma mudança na estrutura da indústria de transformação, a deterioração financeira do setor público, o aperto da restrição da balança de pagamentos e o aumento da dependência econômica externa. Essas mudanças estruturais foram em grande parte responsáveis pela crise cambial de 1999. As medidas políticas subsequentes falharam amplamente em lidar com essas fraquezas da economia brasileira.

Currency Crisis or Overproduction? A Marxian Analysis of the Exchange Rate Peg Collapse in Brazil

“…The effects of the Real Plan, therefore, anticipated the entry in the peak stage of the business cycle, which happened in the fourth quarter of 1994. 9 There was a significant increase in the capital goods import coefficient between (Saad-Filho and Morais 2002. 10 It is important to mention that these events are also a consequence of the productive restructuring taking place in Brazil during the period analyzed here.…”

“…If, on the one hand, authors such as Schwartsman (1999) argue that, in spite of the heavy burden imposed by the monetary policy, the fiscal adjustment by itself would be enough to maintain macroeconomic stability, on the other hand, an expressive part of the authors from the aforementioned second group understands that the stabilization plan was doomed from the very beginning. Kregel (1999) and Saad-Filho and Morais (2002) are examples of those authors. The explanation of why the plan would be doomed is presented by us in subsection 2.1.…”

“…This situation would tend to get worse given the upward pressure on the interest rate to maintain capital inflow, therefore making the collapse unavoidable. Saad-Filho and Morais (2002), in turn, place the Real Plan as part of the Tropical Neomonetarism, 1 that is, a new development strategy that attempts to finance domestic investment with foreign savings by luring foreign capital through the financial market or privatizations. This set of policies, however, seems to be destabilizing, since the capital inflow, on which the country becomes structurally dependent, is more sensitive to the central countries' financial market scenario than it is to the macroeconomic fundamentals or economic policies of the peripheral ones.…”

“…Once a satisfactory level of relative price stability was reached, the last stage of the plan was put into action in July 1994: it encompassed the creation of the new currency (the real [R$]), the imposition of limits for monetary base expansions, the acceleration of the liberalization process that had started in 1985, and the establishment of the exchange rate anchor in an asymmetric exchange rate band regime: the exchange rate would float as long as it was under R$1.00/US$. As a consequence of latter developments, however, the exchange rate regime changed on two occasions: to introduce the symmetrical exchange rate band in March 1995 and to transform it into crawling bands in June the same year (Ferrari Filho 2001; Saad-Filho and Morais 2002; Giambiagi and Além 2016; Giambiagi et al 2021).…”

“…If, on the one hand, the stabilization plan’s success is unquestionable, then on the other, it appears to be unequivocal to most economists that it was also the cause of the Brazilian late 1990s crisis (Kregel 1999; Schwartsman 1999; Saad-Filho and Morais 2002; Saad-Filho and Mollo 2002; Giambiagi and Além 2016; Giambiagi et al 2021). In both the mainstream and part of the heterodoxy, this understanding derives from the currency crisis or balance of payments crisis theories (Falcão Silva 2002).…”