quinta-feira, maio 08, 2003

Autobiografia de um amigo

Meu amigo Fernando Zanella teve o privilégio de colocar a história resumida de sua vida online. E não disse para ninguém! Clique no trecho abaixo para ler toda a saga "zanellica"!

I was born in Volta Redonda, State of Rio de Janeiro, where my father worked as an engineer of one of the most famous Brazilian state companies, i.e., Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN). CSN was founded in 1941 as the first steel producer in Brazil. The U.S. funded it after the then Brazilian President, the dictator Vargas, threatened to join the axis powers instead of allowing American military basis in Brazil. CSN was and it still is considered a watershed in the Brazilian industrialization process, an industrialization with central command. Government, in the words of Vargas, had the duty of organizing the "market anarchy." My father died when I was three years old and my family moved to Porto Alegre.

I always had the passion for economics; I am not sure why. I used to buy books about economics even before going to the university. When I was thirteen years old I used to do my mother’s income tax, my first concrete experience with the "mafia’s" work. Brazil was not yet a democratic country in 1982, the year that I entered a public university to study economics. After years of hampered economy, Brazil had a widespread system of inefficient state owned companies, all kinds of regulation and uncontrolled government debts at all levels of government. CSN was finally privatized in 1993. Its net income jumped from US$ 22 millions to US$ 154 millions in 1994.