Brazil is clearly in a recession that was engendered by a series of economic policy mistakes made by the neoliberal governments that followed from 1990 up to the present moment, and also by the passive attitude of the incompetent Michel Temer government that does not adopt any effective measure that is Capable of avoiding Brazil's journey towards economic depression.

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BRAZIL TOWARD ECONOMIC DEPRESSION
Fernando Alcoforado *
Economic depression corresponds to a long period characterized by a sharp drop in
economic growth, a number of corporate failures, mass unemployment, credit shortages,
low levels of production and investment, a reduction in commercial transactions, high
exchange rate volatility and a crisis of confidence . Periods of prolonged economic
contraction are called depression. The depression that hit the world economy in 1929
persisted throughout most of the 1930s and was only weakened by the execution of
public works and the increase in military spending in World War II.
Recession, in turn, is a period in which there is a decline in the economic growth rate of
a region or country for two or more consecutive quarters. Recession leads to a decline in
production and labor, wages and profits. From the businessmen's point of view,
recession means restricting imports, producing less, and increasing idle capacity. For
the consumer, it means credit restriction, high interest rates and discouragement for
purchases. For the worker, it means low wages and unemployment. In the current case
of Brazil, everything leads one to believe that the country that is in deep recession must
move towards a situation of economic depression.
Data released by IBGE recently show that Brazil's economic activity has dropped to the
level at the beginning of 2011. We are currently going through a period in which
production is falling for three consecutive quarters, after another three months without
growth. In addition, the data show that the fall in production in the third quarter of this
year is 4.5% below the level obtained in the same period last year. It is not, therefore, a
trivial drop, much less sporadic. The impact of the recession on Brazilian income was
even more profound than on the economy as a whole. Since 2014, when the crisis
began, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita (the total value of GDP divided by
population) fell by 9.1%, according to IBGE. GDP per capita stood at R$ 30,407 in
2016. Meanwhile, total GDP grew by 0.5% in 2014 and fell by 7.2% in the accumulated
in 2015 and 2016.
The sector most affected by the crisis was agriculture, which declined 6.6%, mainly due
to corn (-25.7%), sugarcane (-2.7%) and soybeans (-1.8%) production. The industry
decreased by 3.8%, with a negative highlight for the manufacturing industry, which
supplies equipment to other industries and fell by 5.2%. The services sector fell by 2.7%
in 2016. On its own, trade decreased by 6.3%. The area of transport, storage and mail
decreased by 7.1%. Besides the fall in absolute values, there was also a decline in the
proportion of investment in relation to GDP. The investment rate closed the year at
15.4%, lower than that of 2015, at 18.2%. One of the main drivers of Brazilian
economic activity, household consumption also declined in 2016. Consumption fell by
4.2% in 2016 - a year earlier, it had declined 4%. High unemployment (12.5 million
workers) is due to the fall in the population's income in real terms.
From the data presented above, one can affirm that Brazil is clearly in a recession that
was engendered by a series of errors of economic policy committed by the neoliberal
governments that followed from 1990 to the present moment, and also by the passive
attitude of the incapable Michel Temer government who does not adopt any effective
measure that is able to avoid Brazil's journey towards economic depression.
Maintaining the current neoliberal economic policy, it must take ten years for Brazil to
recover its lost wealth through recession.

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For Brazil to overcome the current recession and avoid economic depression, it is
essential to overcome four major obstacles: 1) the incompetent and antipopular
government of Michel Temer; 2) the failed neoliberal economic model; 3) the
inefficient and ineffective model of public management in Brazil; And 4) the bankrupt
and corrupt institutional political system of the Country. The Michel Temer government
is an obstacle to overcoming the economic, political and public management crisis in
Brazil because it demonstrates incompetence in the conduction of the economy,
disengagement with the interests of the people and of the nation and submission to the
dictates of financial capital. In addition, it is a weak government under the incompetent
leadership of Michel Temer, who has the rejection of 90% of the Brazilian population
and does not have the political leadership or the administrative capacity necessary to
carry out the transformations required for Brazil in the current moment.
The neoliberal economic model failed in Brazil because it provoked a real devastation
in the Brazilian economy from 1990 to 2014 characterized by the weak economic
growth, the bottlenecks in the economic and social infrastructure, the deindustrialization
of the Brazilian economy, the explosion of the public debt and the denationalization of
the Brazilian economy. In an attempt to overcome the economic crisis, the Michel
Temer government, which replaced the ill-fated Dilma Rousseff government, decided to
adopt an economic policy that is deepening the recession of the economy, the rapid rise
of public debt, the general collapse of companies and also in mass unemployment.
Brazil's public management model is inefficient and ineffective due to the lack of
integration of federal, state and municipal governments in promoting national, regional
and local development. This is one of the main causes of the administrative disruption
of the public sector in Brazil, generating waste, delays in the execution of works and
unbridled corruption. Associated with this fact is the existence of inadequate
organizational structures at each of the federal, state and municipal levels that make the
integrative effort in these instances of government unfeasible. The lack of integration of
the different instances of the State is therefore total, causing the action of the public
power to become chaotic as a whole, thus generating diseconomies of all kinds.
The country's political system has failed because current presidentialism has generated
political and institutional crises, the country's political system is contaminated by
corruption, representative democracy in Brazil manifests clear signs of exhaustion not
only by corruption scandals in the powers of Republic, but above all by discouraging
popular participation in government decisions, reducing political activity to mere
electoral processes, which are repeated periodically in which the people elect their
representatives, who, with a few exceptions, they defend interests of economic groups
as opposed to the interests of those who elected them.
The Brazilian people need to understand that are not enough small changes or simple
reforms in existing political institutions and legislation. It is fundamentally urgent to
overcome the gigantic economic crisis, the deep political crisis, the management crisis
of the public administration and the moral and ethical crisis that threaten Brazil's future.
It must be understood that all these crises are interconnected and that none of them will
be overcome in isolation without overcoming the others. The first of the crises to be
overcome is the political crisis with the resignation of Michel Temer and the
constitution of a provisional government presided over by the president of the STF
Supreme Federal Court that would then call a new National Constituent Assembly to

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reorder the national life on new bases after which general elections would be held
throughout Brazil on the basis of the new constitutional order.
* Fernando Alcoforado, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável-
Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do
Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social
(Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática
Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015) and As Grandes Revoluções Científicas,
Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016).