Brazil’s New Central Banker Sees Huge GDP Drop and Grim Outlook

Brazil’s new central banker Ilan Goldfajn comes to the job with a sober view on Latin America’s largest economy, saying approval for recovery measures will be hard to come by.

As chief economist for Brazil’s largest bank Itau Unibanco Holding SA, Goldfajn expected a deeper economic contraction than the 3.7 percent median forecast by 41 economists in a Bloomberg survey.

Now that he’ll head the central bank, pending confirmation from Congress, he’ll have to use the tools at hand to prove himself wrong on the GDP front, by trying to jump start the economy while keeping consumer prices under control and trimming benchmark interest rates from the highest in a decade. The 50-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained economist was named Tuesday by Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles who himself recently took the post as Acting President Michel Temer completes his cabinet appointments.