I think its too harsh to blame fBolsa Família for the current state of the Brazilian economy. Its share of the budget is not even that big in the grand scheme of things. For example, subsidized loans the government&#x2F;BNDES gives to large business (who coincidentally happen to be campaign contributors) are responsible for a bigger hole in the budget than the bolsa família.<p>Also, the reason we had to rename the currency last time was because Brazil had suffered from hyperinflation for so many decades that even after the government stopped printing money prices kept goingup out of sheer inertia. To give an idea, most supermarkets hired a person that would go around the aisles restickering things and mindlessly bumping prices by 2% every day.<p>Nowadays the government again has gone back to the times of a screwed up monetary policy but we are still far away from hyperinflation.