Ideology, Class, and Class Conflict in the Brazilian National Monetary Council

This book empirically tracks the ideas of public actors and reviews their motivating spirits in an effort to uncover the economic ideologies underpinning the current format of the Brazilian National Monetary Council (CMN, Conselho Monetário Nacional in the Brazilian acronym). It draws a link between the Council members who believe in economic orthodoxy and the Brazilian ruling class, on an instrumental search for who is truly in power. The CMN was created by the Military Dictatorship in 1964, although it has undergone various phases and formations since that time. The 1990s brought the Real Plan, a process of inflation stabilization, which was led by a group of mainstream neo-classical economists, who achieved a high degree of operational autonomy in forming and implementing monetary policy. During this time, the CMN evolved into a triumvirate composed of the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Planning, and the President of the Central Bank. There have been numerous public conflicts among the members of this powerful monetary policy institution over the last two decades. Using entirely new methodology, this book analyses these conflicts and explains the class character of the divergences in financial policies.