But it demands politicians who can distinguish between budget profligacy and prudent borrowing, and who have the courage to push through unpopular reforms.
Scores of political appointees are lodged in the richest ministries (health, social security) and state-owned companies (Petrobrás, the postal service), where looting is common.Ironically, since the Collor scam, Brazil has created some of the developing world's most powerful tools to punish profligacy and catch budget pirates.
After the budget profligacy of her first term, Rousseff's promotion of unpopular austerity measures aimed at reducing the deficit and improving fundamentals has cost her considerable support — particularly among the country's poorest voters, who traditionally side with the president.
This approach has brought great change, checking misuse or profligacy with government budgets and cracking down on corrupt practices in procurement policies.
From obsession in Iraq to inattention in New Orleans, from budget-busting profligacy to the constriction of civil liberties, from the coarse cronyism of Halliburton to the greasy skid marks left by his political henchmen, the president has proved to be a veritable Walt Whitman of self-contradiction and a Wile E Coyote of catastrophe.
As Mr. O'Neill and the International Monetary Fund see it, Argentina is a victim of its own profligacy and must cut spending until no budget deficit remains.
Even Mitt Romney, who is attacking President Obama for fiscal profligacy and has pledged to balance the budget if he is elected, has acknowledged that slashing more than a trillion dollars from the deficit next year would bring on another recession.
Topping the list are spending cuts that would severely trim the operational budgets of local municipalities – whose profligacy has been widely blamed for public sector debt – and the health ministry.
Providing additional bailouts without such budget pressure would only encourage further profligacy, the Germans contend, and it could set off inflation.
China's conservative policy makers like the fact that Germany operates on tight budgets, mistrusting what they see as profligacy elsewhere in Europe.
