Yesterday on Facebook all our Brazilian friends (well, at least three of them) posted a link to a column in yesterday’s Financial Times which was picked up and reported in the Portuguese press. The FT columnist (probably with tongue firmly in cheek) proposed a radical solution for Portugal’s current economic woes, suggested that Portugal should become an offshore province annexed to Brazil!
More or less in the same breath, Time magazine popped through our letterbox with the headline in the economy section : “Rise of the Rest : With all the focus in recent weeks on Japan and the Middle East, an important economic milestone has gone relatively unnoticed: Brazil has surpassed France and the UK to become the world’s 5th largest economy.”
If that is not enough to flatten the ego of any former world power, and discoverer of half of the globe, along comes Madame President, Dilma Rousseff, recently sworn in as Brazil’s first woman president, over here on her first European visit, and being greeted by recently “ex’ed” Prime Minister Jose Socrates.
Among her words of support for the former colonial master, she expressed her assurance that “...our economic teams have been having a permanent and fluent dialogue on the matter... One of the possibilities is buying part of Portugal's sovereign debt...”
My, how the tables of turned since the days of King Joao VI, Back in 1808, he skilfully avoided confrontation with the all conquering Napoleon by physically moving the seat of the Portuguese kingdom and all his royal court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, thereby elevating Brazil from mere colony to a sovereign Kingdom united with Portugal!
“The grass withers and the flowers fall, kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall, but the word of our God stands forever” Isaiah 40:8
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