Lula: "White People with Blue Eyes" Caused Financial Crisis

From today's Financial Times ("Brazil president blames white people for crisis"):

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva yesterday blamed the global economic crisis on "white people with blue eyes" and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people's mistakes, writes Jonathan Wheatley .

Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: "This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing."

He added: "I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind which is victimised more than any other should pay for the crisis."

Lula ought to know about the victimization of black and indigenous people. After all, Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish black slavery, and as recently as five years ago, Brazil acknowledged that tens of thousands of its indigenous citizens were working as slave laborers. It's interesting that Lula says he doesn't know of any black or indigenous bankers though. Perhaps all the bankers in Brazil are white, but this isn't the case in the United States. We've had African Americans at the highest levels of the financial industry -- for example, Stan O'Neal as CEO of Merrill Lynch, and Don Parsons as a director (and soon to be chairman) of Citigroup. We've also had people of all races and backgrounds involved in originating toxic mortgages -- including Brazilians. In fact, two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported on a "mostly Brazilian ring that allegedly conspired to defraud people by persuading them to buy homes they couldn't afford" ("How the Subprime Mess Hit Poor Immigrant Groups"). Here's an excerpt from that article:

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Naira Costa, a 27-year-old housekeeper, met her husband at Message of Peace, an evangelical church that is a spiritual and social haven for Brazilians in the Bay Area. When the couple considered buying a house a few years ago, the church's head deacon, Soario Santos, ministered to that need, too.

Mr. Santos, a fellow Brazilian, served the Pentecostal church on nights and weekends. During the day, he worked as a loan officer at a mortgage brokerage owned by a Brazilian immigrant. Mr. Santos and other church officers also working at the same real-estate business routinely approached churchgoers to encourage them to buy homes.

Weak credit and low wages weren't barriers, Ms. Costa recalls. "He told us that a house easily would appreciate $100,000 in a year," enabling the owner to refinance, says Ms. Costa. "We trusted him implicitly. Everyone at the church was buying houses from him."

Today, Ms. Costa and other former Message of Peace parishioners claim that Mr. Santos was a key part of a mostly Brazilian ring that allegedly conspired to defraud people by persuading them to buy homes they couldn't afford. Ms. Costa, the housekeeper, secured a $713,000 sub-prime mortgage. In another instance, a Brazilian baby sitter borrowed $495,000. Now, the home buyers are beset by foreclosures and additional stains on their already-tainted credit.

The graphic above, from a Knight-Ridder article on modern slavery in Brazil, comes from a website called Mongabay.com

English versus Brazilian Portuguese

The Financial Times invited a series of guest columnists to opine about the future of capitalism this week, and one of those guests was the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula's essay ("The Future of Human Beings is What Matters"), which was mocked by a letter writer later in the week¹, doesn't offer much revelation. Lula recounts his hardscrabble background, which may be of interest to those still unfamiliar with his biography, and describes some of Brazil's recent successes in growing its economy while increasing aid to its poor. In truth though, the Brazilian president deserves more credit for what he hasn't done. He has avoided the radical populist policies of some of his neighbors, and Brazil has continued some sensible macroeconomic policies on his watch. As a result, it looks to be in a better position to weather the current downturn.

That op/ed by the Brazilian president reminded me of something I read years ago, a comparison of American English to Brazilian Portuguese in Mark Helprin's 1997 novel, Memoir from an Antproof Case. The speaker below, the narrator of Helprin's novel, is an elderly American who has settled in Brazil after a long and rather picaresque life, and teaches English at the Brazilian naval academy in Rio de Janeiro:

Portuguese is a magnificent language -- Intimate, sensual, and fun. The great poets make it sound like a musical incantation of slurred elisions and rhythmic dissolves, and day-to-day, corrupted, vital, and undisciplined, it is ideal for the dissolute life of a modern city, though what it gains in humor and intimacy it loses in precision and resolution. In fact, it is, when compared to English, almost like a baby language.

Do not misinterpret me. I love baby language, for babies, but among adults it can be rather annoying, especially if you have been here thirty years with not a day of relief, having arrived fully formed and mature, and having come, as I did, from a place where language is not a perfumed cushion but a tightly strung bow that sends sharp arrows into the heart of everything.

The language of my boyhood was the language of ice and steel. It had the strong and lovely cadence of engines in a trance. The song of the world in snow, it was woefully inadequate for conveying material ecstasy, but more than enough for the expression of spiritual triumph.

Portuguese of course isn't a "baby language", but it does lend itself well to song, for reasons Helprin lyrically describes above.

The photo above is a snapshot Cheryl took a few years ago of part of Rio de Janeiro from the top of one of the local tourist sites, Pão de Açúcar (Sugar Loaf) mountain.

¹Letter writer Prof. Alex Callinicos wrote, in part:

Sir, I’m delighted to learn that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, thinks that “the future of human beings is what matters” (March 10). Evidently your series on the Future of Capitalism is stimulating real thinking outside the box. But even worse than the familiar banalities of grandees (at least you seem to be sparing us Bono) is your own special pleading.