Brazil in Focus

What Brazilians say about the Forestry Law

Ever since the National Congress started reviewing the laws governing forestry and deforestation a year or so ago, Brazil's chattering classes have been in a huff.  Green groups charge the politicians with sacrificing the world's largest rainforest on the altar of agribusiness, while farmers and ranchers protest that environmentalists would sooner cripple the economy and criminalize honest work than see a single tree felled. But what do the Brazilians think?

Time bomb? Slowmo tsunami? Pick your doomsday metaphor. Economists and policy types eschew sensationalist language, but you don't need an advanced degree in math to see this is an unsustainable arrangement.

In Brazil, Ex is Forever

With the ballots counted and outgoing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's anointed successor Dilma Rousseff safely elected, a major question looms over Brazil: What now Lula?

Brazil being Brazil, a land where the next campaign begins the nanosecond the last one ends, speculation is already rife.

Much has been said about Brazil's rise from underachieving developing world economy to emerging market powerhouse. It's easy to forget now how the country achieved stability, growth and now glory. National Public Radio recently posted a podcast, How Four Drinking Buddies Saved Brazil, on the country's new found prosperity and the unlikely path Brazil took to get there.