Blame it on Rio

Or maybe on the Bossa Nova with its magic spell.  Anyway, the girls and boys from Ipanema will be one day travelling on roads built by entrepreneurs, according to the socialist government;

Under the terms of the new program, the government will award private companies concessions for construction, maintenance and operation of the projects through a competitive bidding process - an approach that was widely hailed by the business sector here. Officials said calls for offers would go out in the coming months, with projects awarded the lowest bidder.

Clesio Andrade, head of the industry group the National Transport Confederation, praised Rousseff's left-leaning administration for opening the investments up to the private sector.

"It's important that after more than 20 years, the government has left behind ideology and opened the projects to participation by private enterprise," Andrade said. "That gives a lot of strength to the projects and will help generate more jobs."

Not only that, but the government may have bowed to economic reality on their entitlements crisis; Paul Ryan call your office;

Analyst Steven Bipes, a Rio-based senior advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group consultancy firm, also welcomed Rousseff's announcement, which he said meets "the top-level area of dire need for investment - logistics and transportation."

"The stimulus spending, because that's what it is, is excellent, especially when complemented with medium- and long-term measures to address the underlying challenges," including, he said, Brazil's onerous tax regime and its expensive pension system. "It's overall very positive because it takes an integrated approach to these issues, instead of dealing with them in an ad hoc fashion," as Brazil has been wont to do in the past, he said.