Brazil avert crisis via poverty relief

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said Friday a newly-launched anti-poverty effort may help fend her country off the current global financial crisis. Aimed at lifting 16 million out of poverty, the Brazil without Poverty plan is not only a social program but also a major initiative to stimulate consumption, said Rousseff at the program's launch in the country's south. "Brazil was the last that suffered the crisis and would be the first to overcome it because of its greatest advantage of domestic market," she said. The South American nation's 40-million-strong middle class emerging over the past years is crucial to domestic market consolidation and has strengthened national ability to resist crisis, said the president. Rousseff said the effort to solve the global crisis has made little progress, and her country won't pay the price for a crisis of other nations' making. "We will not let Brazil pay for a crisis that is not ours," she said, though it's necessary to cooperate with the countries facing economic problems.