If you watch the international news (probably best done by not watching American news channels) you may have noticed a few protestors in the streets of Rio and Sao Paolo, more than a million actually. This is a very big set of protests against a government that recently won reelection with 51% of the vote in October 2014. What happened?
Well, without going into depth into all the issues, the Brazilian economy is now declining. The Brazilian economy, which grew at annual average of 3.3% to 3.4% a year over the course of 14 years (from 2000-2013), only grew 0.1% in 2014 and then declined 3.8% in 2015. Now it is forecasted to decline 3.5% in 2016 (IMF forecast). This is a big deal and we are seeing the natural backlash.
There are a couple of countries in Eastern Europe with similar large economic declines. The Russian economy declined by at least 3.7% last year (official figures) and will be continuing to decline this year. The Ukrainian economy did even worse, declining by something like 12.5% in 2015.