Brazil is going through one of the most tragic moments in its history, but in 2020, which ended with 195,000 deaths from Covid-19 and a GDP (gross domestic product) that fell by 4%, the financial movement in stock market (B3) reached record points and traded volumes.
The Bovespa index broke the unprecedented 120,000 points mark and the volume traded was 35 trillion reais, almost five times the GDP for the year.
How was this possible?
Brazilian financial capitalism
In the Brazilian case, the R $ 1.2 trillion Central Bank financial system bailout, announced in March 2020, contributed to growing financial gains in the same proportion of Covid-19 deaths in the country.
It should be noted that the rationale for such a package was to guarantee the banks’ liquidity in their transactions with customers.
A study by the Institute of Economics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) shows that a little more than 10% of this amount has actually been made available for credit to companies in difficulty, in full swing. pandemic.
Antonio Gramsci had already noted that the political function of fascism is to place the petty bourgeoisie and its anti-system discourse, the foundations of the fascist movement, at the service of financial monopoly capital, in times of crisis.
The “neofascism” of the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, with his 20 to 30% of followers in the population and the economic conduct of Minister Paulo Guedes seem to confirm the Gramscian diagnosis.
What we see today in Brazilian capitalism has taken shape since the 2008 crisis, which only happened in Brazil with the fall in commodity prices in 2011.
Since then, we have seen a double movement that culminated in the 2016 coup: the deepening of financialization on a global scale and in Brazil; and a further expansion of international monopoly capital on the Brazilian economy.
In a global environment of huge masses of excess capital in search of appreciation, Brazil found itself under pressure from large economic groups for denationalizations, privatizations, flexibilization of labor relations and deepening of the economy. budgetary adjustment – this “reform program” “, according to the media, or simply” ultraneoliberal agenda “, underway since the government of Michel Temer.
It is no coincidence that the volume traded on the stock exchange has more than doubled over the past four years, quickly pulling away from the real economy.
In 2016, the year of the coup against former President Dilma Rousseff, it represented a little more than double the GDP, now reaching the figure already mentioned nearly five times.
Financial market players
Economic groups (foreign and domestic) generally control financial institutions such as banks, holding companies and investment funds.
These are the institutions that manage the financial casino, draining the wealth generated by the population, through their work and the payment of debts, fees and taxes, to their shareholders and holders of quotes.
Today, they are fully represented in the Ministry of the Economy of Paulo Guedes (former founding partner of BTG Pactual) and in the now “autonomous” central bank of Roberto Campos Neto (former market agent in Santander).
It is therefore they who support Bolsonaro and his clique of the Armed Forces, commanded today by an official, of the 1964 generation, intellectually indigent and politically servile to the neoliberal agenda.
It is therefore in the “Faria Lima”, avenue de São Paulo that gathers the cream of the financial sector, who are the main responsible, with the puppet Bolsonaro, of the state of calamity in which more than 300,000 people died. by Covid -19, the result of Bolonarian negativism.
In the name of these “economic reforms”, they are ready to sacrifice liberal democratic principles and support autocratic exits.
Especially since they know that the anti-social nature of these reforms requires a government capable of imposing them with iron and fire on society, such as the approval by the government of the proposal for emergency constitutional amendment (PEC) which , in exchange for emergency aid of meager R $ 250, further stifling public spending.
Admittedly, those of Faria Lima have been acting for some time for the “genocide” of the Brazilian population, but today the great openness of this “necrogouvernement” that they support requires that there be no half-words. on their responsibility.
But who are they?
One clue is to look at the financial institutions that are rallying around the National Association of Financial Entities and Capital Markets (Anbima). Anbima is responsible for the self-regulation of the financial market, together with the public authority, the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM).
The regularization of the financial market as a pending task
It has now become mainstream to draw attention to the financial elite as the ones who, in fact, play a role in politics. However, in view of the extreme situation we are living in the country, this is not enough.
You have to name, call to report.
The rich have become accustomed to seeing their incomes multiply without being interested in how such multiplication is done in the real world – as someone said, in the financial orbit there is no clot of humanity.
By taking a quick look at the composition of the board of directors of Annima, we have identified some of these institutions that rule the bank.
Highlight for the national representatives Itaú / Unibanco, BTG Pactual, Bradesco, XP Investimentos, Votorantim and Safra; for foreign groups, Santander, Blackrock, Brookfield, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan and BNP Paribas.
They are very powerful institutions, some of which have much more capital than Brazil’s GDP, but it is precisely for this reason that they must be exposed.
Let us therefore leave the veil of the so-called “financial market”, which is nothing more than an organization which, under the pretext of directing internal and external savings towards the productive sector, effectively acts as a corroding parasite. ‘host. organization.
Financial officers are not expected to raise awareness.
As Gramsci also says, it is a mistake to expect the bourgeoisie itself to resist fascism. It would be the same as acknowledging that in the recent initiative of the ‘Open Letter to Society Regarding Covid Measures’, the so-called ‘Letter from Economists and Bankers’, there was a sense of opposition to the Bolsonaro government.
It is a late letter that is limited, in the midst of the collapse of the health system, to point out the bottlenecks in the management of the pandemic, known and spread for a long time.
The income guarantee and social protection proposals are superficial, considering that they are economists.
Perhaps this is because such proposals would lead them to have to state their intransigent defense of cutting, at this very critical time, public spending.
The intention here is much less pretentious. It is enough to name, to come out of the shadows, to publicly hold the financial elite to account, so that the debate can be settled, at least, more clearly and directly.
With the word universities, organizations and social movements, on the urgency of exercising control, social watch of the financial market.