Take Back Your Mink

Take Back You Mink

Brazil's energetic Finance Minister Oswaldo Aranha is a good friend of the U.S., but at the moment he is no friend of U.S. investments. Last week, in an interview with the New York Times's Sam Pope Brewer, Aranha made this abundantly clear. Brazil, Aranha explained, wants neither loans nor investments from abroad. Said he: "We have depended too much on outside aid. That's why we have not made more progress. We must learn to stand on our own feet." Foreign private capital, he said, has done Brazil more harm than good, and if foreign companies do not like the new taxes he plans to impose, "they can leave; it makes no difference." Americans, said Aranha, "are our best friends, but we have always made our poorest business deals with our best friends."

Cabled back to Rio, the interview kicked up such a fuss that Aranha rushed out with a further explanation, claiming in effect that he had been quoted out of context. He said that he was not against constructive investments that stayed in Brazil and were content with moderate profits; the trouble was that there has not been much of that kind of U.S. money around in recent years. The burden of both U.S. and Brazilian taxation, explained Oswaldo Aranha, "leads U.S. enterprises to seek investments and profits here that the weakness of our economy cannot stand."

In the midst of readying a drastic tax program to strengthen Brazil's new austerity regime, Aranha also successfully fought off an inflationary congressional proposal to pay 145,000 government workers an extra month's salary as a Christmas bonus. "It would be crazy," stormed Aranha. "Brazil is like a family that has no funds but wants to give a luxurious party."

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