> Also, I don't think Brazil is a special example at all.

Yeah, like most Brazilians I used to think that Brazil was exceptional. The eye-opener was the book "The Elusive Quest for Growth", which describes efforts to bring many countries out of poverty. Most poor countries make similar mistakes, we're not an exception at all.

Finally, you're talking about a vast region with hundreds of millions of people. If its own population and leaders want development, they'll find a way to get it, regardless of what any U.S agency or president wants without resorting to full blown military interventions across the board.

The idea that South America would be rich if only it weren't for the "Evil U.S." is a hard leftist myth that gets far too much credit at the expense of a much more complex and dynamic reality with many sources of not so popular blame.

Isn't the petrobras scandal a good example of that? Or before that, the ridiculous culmination of the "steals but does" campaign by Maluf?

My understanding is that the IOF tax is in place precisely as an attempt from the government to keep tabs on the volume of siphoning of currency by politicians to Miami and tax havens elsewhere.

While I'm not particularly convinced of some of accusations thrown around by article, there's at least an attempt to analyze the situation, rather than the usual shrugging off the status quo.

Yeah, I think this is what the article was trying to get at, verbose and roundabout as it may have been. My main criticism would be against the idea that there is some consciously coordinated "elite" coming together to sabotage the country. Personally, I tend to think of it more as a tragedy of the commons, where multiple uncoordinated entities simultaneously arrive at the conclusion that exploitation of less privileged/leveraged/savvy entities is an acceptable way to achieve selfish/capitalist goals. One could definitely argue that the Brazilian culture of hustling certainly doesn't help there.