A brilliant and penetrating look at the US and the world from the man the NY Time called "arguably the most important intellectual alive". As is happening almost everywhere in the Third World, Brazil's generals, their cronies and the super rich borrowed huge amounts of money and sent much of it abroad. The need to pay off that debt is a stranglehold that prevents Brazil from doing anything to solve its problems. But if I borrow money and send it to a Swiss bank and can't pay off my creditors, is that your problem or mine? The people in the slums didn't borrow the money, nor did the landless workers. In my view, it's no more the debt of 90% of the people of Brazil than it is the man in the moon's. Let the people who borrowed the money pay it back. Investment is supposed to be as risk free as possible. No corporations wants free markets - what they want is power. James Madison believed that the primary goal of gov't is "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." As his colleague John Jay was fond of putting it, "The people who own the country ought to govern it." This a a business-run, huckster society and its primary value is deceit.
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