The article analyses the Brazilian economic situation from April, 2002 to May, 2003, from intense turbulence around the presidential campaign to optimism with the beginning of Lula government. Newspaper headlines and economic indexes are examined in the light of the theory of thinking, also introducing Economic Psychology. Objectivity of economic information and its influence over indexes associated to immediate risk perception, disregarding actual economic performance, are debated. Such inconsistencies are discussed using psychoanalytical conceptions about emotions at work over perception and interpretation of socio-economic phenomena, due to the importance of information over economic behavior.
Confidence; economic behavior; economic psychology; instability; mental functioning
