Compared with its long history of sluggish growth, rampant inflation and recurrent financial crises, Brazil’s economy has been transformed over the past five years. As recently as 2002, the economy was on the verge of bankruptcy and Brazil was forced to seek and receive emergency financing from the International Monetary Fund.

The mark of the change is not that those loans have been paid off long ago, but that this summer the IMF gave Brazil an enthusiastic stamp of approval.