BRASILIA, Brazil �� The stock market may have rallied, the currency may have strengthened, but one year after President Dilma Rousseff's ouster, Brazilians see few reasons to cheer.
The country's deepest recession in history grinds on. Unemployment has reached a record high. The government wants everyone to delay retirement. And now, video testimony has emerged showing corporate executives detailing �� sometimes, laughingly �� how they bought off dozens of top politicians.
For those who believed the removal of Rousseff and the leftist Workers' Party from power was all that it would take to restore Brazil's swagger, the last 12 months have proved a slow and painful lesson. The country's gross domestic produce is forecast to grow a meager 0.4 percent this year even after the central bank cut benchmark borrowing rates by 3 full percentage points since October. Frustrated by a seemingly endless corruption scandal and the government's austerity program, patience with Brazil's political establishment is growing thin ahead of next year's general election.
The gloom on the streets has yet to affect the markets. The stock index has risen over 22 percent and the real, Brazil's currency, is up 16 percent since April 2016, highlighting investors' unwavering confidence that the unpopular government of President Michel Temer can turn around the economy and push through crucial reforms just as the corruption scandal, known as Carwash, flares up again.
Given that Brazil has repeatedly bounced back from political scandals, economic crises and a previous impeachment, they may be on to something.
But even Temer's allies in Congress worry that his administration is not doing enough to boost the economy in the short term.
Rogerio Rosso, a legislator from the allied Social Democratic Party who helped oversee Rousseff's impeachment, said the government is right to push through structural economic reforms, though he worries it is not giving enough importance to the productive economy. "The economic team just thinks of numbers and adjustment and not about the day-to-day of the productive sector," he said.
Operation Carwash has been running for over three years, but the scandal took a significant turn last week when Supreme Court Judge Luiz Edson Fachin authorized investigations into eight members of the Cabinet, about a quarter of the Senate and dozens of congressional deputies.
Four of Brazil's five living former presidents have been cited by executives from Odebrecht in relation to corruption allegations. Temer himself, though effectively shielded from prosecution relating to acts predating his presidency, issued a video defending himself from claims that he took part in discussions involving illegal campaign financing.
Compounding the sense of crisis, thousands of hours worth of video testimony from Odebrecht executives were released by the Supreme Court and shown by the mainstream media. In a country where TV remains the dominant information medium, the videos brought to life the written transcripts that have dominated newspaper coverage for months in vivid and depressing detail.
Founder Emilio Odebrecht barely suppressed contempt for Rousseff. Son and CEO Marcelo Odebrecht's exasperation at the fact the company's bribe department was a victim of theft. The bland, matter-of-fact detail of how the executives illegally bankrolled the most powerful politicians in the country for decades shocked even graft-hardened Brazilians.
"The verb to serve doesn't exist in Brazilian politics and this is what we are witnessing now in a most clear, devastating way," said Roberto DaMatta, a social anthropologist and professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. "Nobody is optimistic because everybody is ashamed."
Some of the president's closest ministerial aides face investigation, as do the speaker of the lower house, the head of the Senate, and the deputy responsible for guiding a crucial pension bill through Congress.
As the news hit, Rodrigo Maia, the lower house speaker, canceled an important congressional vote to provide debt relief to Brazil's cash-strapped states. Though the government and its allies went on the offensive in the days after the Supreme Court decision, insisting that the scandal would not affect its agenda, some of its foot soldiers in Congress tell a different story.
"It's become a fight for survival," said Rogerio Peninha Mendonca, a deputy from Temer's Brazilian Democratic Movement Party. "No one is going to be tied to Temer to the detriment of social projects. There's a huge sense of dismay in politics."
The fallout from last week's revelations was widespread. At least 15 political parties were affected and several potential presidential candidates for 2018 face further investigation.
Temer and Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles have been in damage-control mode, trying to keep the government's pension reform schedule on track.
Others, however, from outside Brazil's traditional politics have seen their stars rise as the scandal sinks the establishment.
Sao Paulo Mayor Joao Doria, an entrepreneur and reality TV star, suddenly appears to be leap-frogging over his tainted party rivals in the race for the presidential nomination. Far-right legislator and probable presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro celebrated his absence from Fachin's list while mocking the inclusion of a long-standing political adversary in a video on his Facebook feed.
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