![]() ![]() It's time to pay the bill."īanks and retail stores that offer consumer credit are taking hits on their stock prices and bond ratings as investors fear that, like their customers, institutions will begin missing payments. "They went wild, and now they see the party cannot continue. You give them credit, they will go on a bonanza - and that's what happened," said Roberto Faldini, head of economics for the Sao Paulo Federation of Industries. But now, as interest rates, taxes and unemployment in Brazil have crept up amid an economic slowdown, millions have found themselves unable to make the payments. Sales of color televisions shot up 54 percent VCR sales rose 52 percent. With more faith in the currency, stores and small banks began offering consumer credit on a mass scale, sparking demand unlike anything Brazil had ever witnessed. dollar and brought about an end to hyperinflation - once so bad that the price of goods could double in a few minutes. The credit crisis stems from a buying spree that started in 1994, after then-Finance Minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso, now president, launched his "Real Plan." The plan pegged the local currency, the real, to the U.S. Almost one in four people in Sao Paulo - which has about 11 million people - are officially in debt, according to estimates from the Commercial Society of Sao Paulo. The number of Sao Paulo residents at least 30 days behind on installment plans for appliances, cars and more soared to an all-time high last month. ![]() Edwiges Church from local parish into national mecca has dramatized the extent of a debtors crisis in the New Brazil that has spread faster than you can say "12 easy payments" and has added fuel to an economic pinch that began last month, in part imported from Asia. In the church that bears Edwiges' name in a working-class Sao Paulo neighborhood, thousands of similarly overextended pilgrims are arriving by the bus-load. "Saint Edwiges will make everything right again." "I cannot even pay my water bill now, but Saint Edwiges will help me," whispered Maria, who said she was too embarrassed to give her last name. "Saint Edwiges is miraculous, and she will have pity on me," Maria said of the 13th-century Bavarian saint who has become Brazil's latest celebrity. In her prayer to atone for missing two months of payments on her new color television, she begged Saint Edwiges for forgiveness and a guiding light out of credit Hell. In an unremarkable church tucked away in a corner of this sprawling city, the 31-year-old Brazilian laundry maid knelt before the statue of Saint Edwiges, patron saint of debtors. ![]()
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