Naming the Wolves: Consumer Credit and Rentier Financialisation on the Brazilian Periphery

Abstract Recent social policy in Brazil has centred on a vision for financial inclusion that claims to alleviate poverty through credit‐based consumption. We argue that, contrary to these claims, Brazil's consumer credit boom has entrenched a financialised macroeconomic model in which debt and rentierism have become motors of the national economy. Financial inclusion discourse obscures how the periphery has been the new frontier for this shift, via the institutionalisation of debt as a mechanism for everyday survival. Taking our cue from residents of Peixinhos (the periphery of Olinda, Northeast Brazil), we argue for the imperative to “name the wolves” driving these processes. We thus demonstrate how recent financial legislation has stimulated mass expansion of small‐scale moneylending, formalising a prototype of credit provision which takes the ambiguous practice of loan sharking as its model. Brazilian financialisation is achieved, we argue, through this interplay between financial market innovation, state complicity, and ongoing struggle on the periphery.