This Wednesday, March 23, the long-awaited meeting of the Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) gave the hammer blow and decided to maintain the atrocious interest rate of 13.75%. The so-called basic interest rate, the Selic, remunerates the interest on the public debt and is a kind of floor for other interest rates in the country. With this decision, Brazil continues to have the highest interest rates in the country, 8% after inflation, a real party for rentiers and big bankers.
The Central Bank not only did not change the interest rate, but also threatened, in its statement, with a new increase in the future, following the successive increases that catapulted the Selic rate from 2% in March 2021 to the current 13.75 %. The excuses, once again, were the “uncertainties” in relation to inflation (as if the economy was booming and it was necessary to contain it), and the fiscal result of the government (as if the interests themselves no longer meant billions of dollars). expenses for bankers).
The reason behind pornographic interests is much simpler: to continue filling the pockets of bankers and big international speculators who, in the midst of a financial crisis that is beginning to break out in the big global banks, have their generous milk cow in Brazil.
government and interests
The Copom’s decision provoked new criticism from the government and attacks on the president of the Central Bank, Campos Neto. Since the beginning of his term, Lula has complained about the high interest rates and accuses the president of the Central Bank (BC) of sabotaging the country’s growth. It is necessary to denounce this policy of stratospheric interests that remunerate mega-speculators, a perverse mechanism for transferring income to bankers. The independence of the Central Bank, in turn, is a way of placing it directly under the control of Faria Lima [avenida de San Pablo, centro del mercado financiero, ndt.]without intermediaries.
The problem, however, is not limited to interest. It is part of an entire economic policy aimed at the interests of the super-rich to the detriment of the working class and the vast majority of the population. If Campos Neto were to fall tomorrow and interest rates were cut, Brazil would still have 33 million people going hungry, most of its labor force subjected to precarious jobs, a minimum wage that is barely enough for two basic baskets of food, public services every time more scrapped, and half the town without even basic sanitation.
Thus, confronting the high interests must be part of a fight that combats all this economic policy and that, necessarily, clashes with the billionaires. To really change the country, it is necessary to go further and suspend debt payments to bankers, end the Fiscal Responsibility Law, and invest massively in areas such as Health, Education and job creation. It is necessary to guarantee employment, wages and income, effectively raising the minimum wage, completely revoking the labor reform that, in addition to unemployment, makes work more precarious and lowers wages. And also to revoke the Social Security reform, following the example of the heroic struggle that French workers are now waging.
The Lula-Alckmin government, however, instead of implementing an economic policy in favor of the working class and against the bankers, only attacks the issue of BC interests. Not even the government faced the extortive interest charged by the banks through the loans assigned to retirees. The proposal for a limit of 1.7% interest raised by the Pension Council, which would already guarantee a very high 22% to banks in the accumulated year, was abandoned after complaints from bankers. This is what we are talking about, a type of credit with practically no risk, with discounted payroll payments.
This is because the Lula-Alckmin government governs with and for large companies, multinationals, the super-rich and even sectors of the financial system itself, which lose with interest at this time. It is for no other reason that mainly sectors of the industrial bourgeoisie, headed by Fiesp and CNI, are in the same crusade against high interest rates. A policy that makes credit more expensive and makes their business difficult. It is also necessary to remember that the crisis unleashed in the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was caused in large part by the increase in interest rates by the FED (Federal Reserve, the US central bank), that is, this economic policy is not unanimous among the bankers themselves.
In addition to not confronting the totality of the economic policy inherited from Bolsonaro and Paulo Guedes, the Lula-Alckmin government maintains the pillars of a neoliberal economic policy. The so-called “fiscal framework” that Finance Minister Fernando Haddad is preparing is a way of maintaining the spending ceiling by other means. This means maintaining priority in paying bankers through debt, to the detriment of public services. It is not yet clear what that “framework” will be, but Haddad has already indicated that he insists on imposing a spending ceiling for areas such as Health and Education. Not surprisingly, Paulo Guedes began praising Haddad in well-heeled circles.
It takes independence to fight
The day before the meeting of the Central Bank to decide the Selic rate, the leadership of the centrals such as the CUT and the Força Sindical called for protests, called by the leadership of the PT, against the high interests and the Bolsonaro banker Campos Neto. However, they continued to denounce the interests, in line with the government’s discourse.
It is necessary to denounce the highest interest rates in the world that make the bankers party, but that alone is not enough. It is necessary, as CSP-Conlutas did, to call for mobilization against the payment of the debt that enriches the bankers at the cost of fiscal contraction and the impoverishment of the people.
More than that, it is necessary to fight for the comprehensive revocation of the labor and pension reforms, and for a real increase in the minimum wage, with its immediate doubling towards the Dieese minimum, as defended by the PSTU.
This requires mobilization and independence from governments and employers. The workers must demand that their organizations do not tie themselves to the governments and call for the organization and the fight in defense of the class demands.
Article published in www.pstu.org.br, 3/24/2023.-
Translation: Natalia Estrada.