Share this articleRoberto Campos Neto, the president of the Central Bank, is a neoliberal. And, like a good neoliberal, he is afraid of economic growth and of money in the hands of workers.
This Tuesday (30), he gave an interview to the also neoliberal William Waack on CNN. The journalist who was fired from Globo for a racist comment questioned the economist’s view on full employment.
The topic came up because, on the same day, IBGE published the unemployment levels for March, which were the best since 2014, with a high level of formalization.
Since January 2023, the Lula government has created 2.2 million jobs and is expected to reach full employment levels (between 6% and 3% unemployment) already in its first term.Campos Neto praised it… But it didn’t last long.”
The Central Bank loves it when we have a full employment regime, when everyone looking for work finds it, which is our current situation, which has improved a lot and was a big surprise,” he said.Then, under pressure from Waack to talk about the impacts of this situation on inflation, Neto revealed his true opinion.
“The concern comes when companies can’t hire, and you have to start raising salaries. If you raise salaries to the same production level, that means you are starting an inflationary process.
So, the concern comes from there,” he said.”There is this concern because there is uncertainty about how tight labor affects the services sector. (This indicative of inflationary pressure) appeared in two or three inflation numbers, but recently it’s a bit better,” the economist added.
The growth in employment could be used as an argument for the Central Bank to keep interest rates high at the next meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) and, thus, hinder the increase in GDP for 2024.The mandate of the Bolsonaro supporter ends on January 31st this year.
