Speaking in Salvador during the Brazil-Portugal Summit on 28 October, President Lula cautioned against a laissez-faire approach to economy and declared 'now is the time for politics'.

'What I’m proposing isn’t that the state should interfere in the economy, but that it should have the political force to regulate the financial system,' he said. 'The state, faced with the global crisis, once again has an extraordinary role to play, because when the crisis happened all those institutions that had rejected a role for the state looked to it to rescue them from what they themselves had created.'

The President expressed the opinion that all sectors of the economy should concentrate their efforts on productive activity. 'The financial system has an obligation to base its activities on things that will generate jobs, products, wealth. We can’t let the financial system play around with society. We can’t allow someone to get rich just by exchanging pieces of paper.'

Source: Agência Brasil and Embassy of Brazil in London