Brazil’s slow-motion crisis has a regional impact

While much of the world’s attention on Latin America is focused on Venezuela, there is a slow-motion political and economic crisis in a much bigger country — Brazil — that could have far greater regional consequences.

Earlier this week, Brazil’s Central Bank weekly poll of almost 100 leading economists projected that Brazil’s economy will shrink by 0.58 percent this year, its worst economic performance in the past 25 years.

At the same time, growing numbers of Brazilian politicians and pundits are publicly speculating that President Dilma Rousseff could be impeached in connection with the political scandal over the Petrobras oil company’s estimated $3.8 billion kickbacks to government officials and leading industrialists. The kickbacks took place while Rousseff served in Petrobras’ board of directors between 2003 and 2010.

While an impeachment looks unlikely at the moment, it has become part of Brazil’s political conversation.

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