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As if an impeachment crisis weren't bad enough, Brazil is also contending with its worst recession in decades. The impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff left the acting-president-to-be, Vice President Michel Temer, to confront an economic crisis that matches the political mess. Brazil's economy, the world's seventh-biggest, shrank 3.8 percent last year, and the International Monetary Fund expects it to contract by the same amount in 2016. Brazil, an exporter of commodities like sugar, coffee and iron ore, has been rocked by a steep drop in the price of raw materials, partly the result of weakening demand as the Chinese economy decelerates. "Brazil has had economic crises before," said Shannon O'Neil, senior fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It's had political crises. It's rare that they get both of them at the same time." During the good times of the mid-2000s, Brazilian consumers borrowed heavily, celebrating their arrival in the middle class by buying cars, refrigerators and iPhones. Now, like Americans after the devastating 2008 financial crisis, they face a day of reckoning. They will have to pay down debt and cut spending. In March, Brazil's retail sales were down nearly 6 percent from a year earlier. The political turmoil threatens to worsen the economic crisis. A corruption scandal surrounding the state-run oil company Petrobras has paralyzed businesses that had connections with the energy giant. The tumult makes it difficult to form the political coalitions necessary to move forward. Still, some economists and business leaders expressed tentative confidence that the sidelining of the leftist Rousseff would benefit the economy, which had been one of the world's fastest growing as recently as 2010. "The financial markets are optimistic with the possibility of the president's impeachment," said Alessandra Ribeiro an economist at Tendencias, a Sao Paulo-based consultancy. "The expected changes in the government and its economic policies could represent the beginning of a gradual return of investor confidence in Brazil." Brazilian stocks rallied on the impeachment news. The nation's currency, the real, rallied in advance of the impeachment but retreated a bit against the U.S. dollar after the Senate vote. Temer is under intense pressure to turn the economy around but has been vague about his plans. Ribeiro said Temer and his future government likely will adopt a "different mind-set toward the economy — a more mainstream, market-friendly approach." She expects the Brazilian economy to return to growth in 2017. Economists say Brazil must enact deep and far-reaching economic reforms to make itself more competitive. "There is a path out," O'Neil said. "It's not an easy path or a fast one ... Brazil is very bureaucratic. It's hard to open — it's even harder to close — a business. ... It is the most byzantine and difficult place in the world to file your taxes." Indeed, Brazil ranks 116th out of 189 countries in the World Bank's "ease of doing business" listing. Its tax system is so dysfunctional that Brazilians need an estimated 2,600 hours a year to prepare and pay their taxes, the World Bank says — far ahead of second-worst Bolivia's 1,025 and the United States' 175 hours. Still, Mauro Calil of Sao Paulo's Banco Ouroinvest told the UOL news portal that "any positive sign, no matter how small, is like a glass of water in the desert. It won't resolve the problem, but it will help quench one's thirst for a while." ___ Wiseman reported from Washington, Lehman from Sao Paulo.

Amid political crisis, Brazil economy faces painful downturn