Cracking down on the bond affair would send a powerful message to governors and mayors: not just that mutual back-scratching and self-enrichment are unacceptable, but that Brazil will no longer put up with fiscal high-jinks of any kind.
He is seeking to be elected amid a major fiscal crisis, high unemployment and pervasive public disgust with Albany.
For the rest of the decade, however, the country was faced with a growing fiscal deficit, high debt repayments on commercial borrowing, and dwindling international reserves.
Fitch said that its decision, which followed a similar one by Moody's, reflected "large fiscal imbalances, high indebtedness across all sectors and adverse macroeconomic outlook" facing Portugal.
A newly independent small country with sizeable fiscal deficits, high public debt and reliance on a declining resource for 12% of its fiscal revenue, could not enjoy a triple A rating.
Tight fiscal policy, high real rates and an overvalued exchange rate were a disastrous combination; the UK economy barely grew and the debt burden rose until 1933.Does the UK example mean we should take no fiscal action, as some suggest?
And though the political rhetoric suggests we may have to pay more tax to pay for our public services, we remain reluctant to vote for parties who do not put fiscal caution high in their list of priorities.
Howard Archer, the chief economist at IHS Global Insight, laid out a long list of pressures on consumer spending, including low confidence, the fiscal squeeze, high unemployment, the slowing housing market, and rising food and energy prices.
