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Comment by digi_owl | Hacker News Reader

So it is a very complicated way to say that they ran the government at a surplus before debt payments?

Yep... The term the guy used is the english name for it, in portuguese we call it "surplus" and that is it :P

So in short: Fernando Henrique in 1994 made a law where if you don't make a surplus before debt payments, you are a criminal (of the sort that get arrested)

Dilma Rouseff not only made a deficit (instead of a surplus), she made a law to circunvent the previous law, also her law has the pecualiarity that the project that "don't count" in the debts are her party pet projects (the projects that they put on TV to ask for votes), a possible loophole in the law is that she can spend "infinite" money on her pet projects now.

Thanks for this, the "Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal" (fical responsability act) was truly the best legacy from former president Cardozo.

She can't spend what congress doesn't aprove on the yearly budget.

It used to be this way, but she is using "creative accounting" in order to do that, for example, by making state-owned companies pay some expenses and arguing at the supreme court that these operations are not loans. These maneuvers are nicknamed "pedalada fiscal" (fiscal bike-shredding).

I guess she will be allowed to get away with this because by now the workers party has appointed most of the judges.

Any resemblance with the situation at Venezuela is not mere coincidence, including the situation of the huge state-owned oil monopolies on both countries (Petrobras in Brazil and PDVSA in Venezuela).

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