To halt Brazil’s decline, Lula needs to cut runaway public spending

But in other respects Lula’s third stint as president has disappointed. In the first, from 2003 to 2007, he stabilised the economy with orthodox policies and pushed through economic reforms and social programmes that boosted growth, cut poverty and secured him re-election. Aided by a commodity boom, his second term saw a public-spending splurge. Some of the money went on corruptly padded contracts. The boom ended, but the splurge continued under his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, who added wasteful and ineffective industrial policies. That eventually tipped Brazil into its deepest recession since 1930, while activist judges sent scores of politicians, including Lula himself, to jail for corruption.