Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: In the country of zombies, the economy ends the month in the red and interest rates promise more blood

In the then Great Recession of the early 1980s, we saw people camped on the street, under tents filled with black garbage bags. Brazil was poor as usual, but there was no news of that, of such a long crisis and of those evicted by the crisis exposing our cruel shame even in the squares of rich neighborhoods.

Until then, we were still modernizing poverty, inequality and other oppressions. Not even the military dictatorship was as reactionary and cretin as those people who are now occupying Brasília.

But Brazil has progressed and the world has never been so well off since the Neolithic, as the Pangloss doctors in the capital say. Now, poor people live in small camping tents and install recyclable garbage centers in squares and corners of the “good neighborhoods”. There was progress, right: instead of plastic bags, tents and garbage carts with music.

In the city center, the miserable are more traditional. “Homeless people,” as the correct euphemism puts it, lie on cardboard, wrapped in rags that pass through blankets. Many crowd in front of charities that give away food or clothing. Afterwards, they wander in their hundreds around Praça da Sé or under viaducts near Avenida Paulista.

A little from a distance, it looks like Cracolândia or scenes from zombie movies, prophetic in the representation of agglomerations of refugees, of immigrants trying to break through the fences of rich countries or of poor people from São Paulo.

People from the city hall say that we left 40 thousand people on the streets, but the statistics are not ready. We don’t even count how many others so miserable are hiding in the “communities” or hunting bones in dumpsters. We hear from friends of teachers or read on the hammocks that children faint from hunger at school. There is no revolt, mutiny, nothing.

When I go out into the street with me, my 9-year-old son now asks me if I put money in my wallet, distressed by the terrible poverty, for anyone who wants to give some change. My adult daughter spends the weekend volunteering in “communities” now even poorer and with immigrants who, so desperate, decided to try life in Brazil.

In the last few days, I saw a lot of news of these people on the internet who participated in a party called “farofa”. In the political news, a torrent of news about electoral “articulations” and “backstage” (…), a lot of stupidities from these people indifferent to the scale of the disaster and the enormous risk that the ruin will continue well beyond 2023. If everything goes very well, let’s recover the lost GDP and the amount that we used to grow (and didn’t grow) only around 2030. IF IT WORKS OUT VERY RIGHT.

What’s more, there’s the centrão trying to loot the Budget in order to guarantee re-election, various social gossip and bullshit, power elite skirmishes and our most recent attempts to provoke a new outbreak of epidemic.

The column should deal with October economic and interest rate indicators. Yes, just treated, looking at the horror through the telescope.

In October, industry, commerce and services regressed, produced or sold less. In its exposition of reasons for last week’s interest rate hike (“Ata do Copom”), the Central Bank warned that the Selic rate could go up to 12% a year or higher, pushing the zombie country to the brink of recession. After eight years of impoverishment, even less attention is paid to economic news and to the harbinger of new disgrace, under misgovernment and under the threat of an elite that wants pocketbookism without Bolsonaro (at best. There is worse).

We got used to Jair Bolsonaro’s death, poverty, and criminal horror. It’s the “new normal”.