Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Odd Lots. I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway, Executive editor of Bloomberg Markets, and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: wi isn't All, Managing editor of Bloomberg Markets. So, Joe,
Speaker 1: have you been watching the Olympics at all? Yes? I
Speaker 1: love the Olympics. I totally drink the kool aid. I
Speaker 1: think it's amazing. I get obsessed about sports. I would
Speaker 1: never otherwise get obsessed with I'm a huge Olympics fan. Alright,
Speaker 1: So you know, obviously it's taking place in Brazil this year, right, absolutely?
Speaker 1: And uh, you know unlike in past year. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess every year there's controversy leading up to the games
Speaker 1: about is the country going to be ready, was it
Speaker 1: worth it? Is it going to be an economic loss?
Speaker 1: But it definitely seems like those stories were much more
Speaker 1: dramatic this year. Um, for all kinds of reasons. It
Speaker 1: seems like the stories of unpreparedness where we're send, the
Speaker 1: economic toll and the corruption far worse in Brazil this
Speaker 1: year than in previous games, I would say, Right, So
Speaker 1: you've obviously had a pretty vocal contingent of Brazilians who
Speaker 1: are voicing their outrage that they're hosting the Olympics, are
Speaker 1: spending all this money on Olympic infrastructure and things like that,
Speaker 1: and that's in the middle of a massive government corruption scandal.
Speaker 1: It's also in the middle of a big economic slowdown
Speaker 1: for Brazil. So you can see how people would be
Speaker 1: more sensitive about the Olympics than they might otherwise be.
Speaker 1: So it's quite a change if you think back to,
Speaker 1: you know, just five or six years ago, to what
Speaker 1: Brazil looked like. You remember, Joe, Brazil was like the
Speaker 1: emerging market economy, right. It was like the golden member
Speaker 1: of the bricks contingent, and it was doing everything right,
Speaker 1: couldn't do any wrong. Things were going swimmingly. I remember
Speaker 1: that very vividly. I have this recollection of uh some
Speaker 1: TV story I saw from two thousand eight, right as
Speaker 1: our economy was in collapse and they were down in
Speaker 1: Brazil and the economy was booming, and there said, Brazil
Speaker 1: hasn't completely figured out. It's not even dependent on the
Speaker 1: rest of the world because they don't need to import anything. Um.
Speaker 1: The economy is totally self sufficient. It's thriving, and it
Speaker 1: seemed like Brazil was going to be the model for
Speaker 1: every other country. To follow, right, So, um, I should say,
Speaker 1: in honor of the Olympics in Brazil, or in honor
Speaker 1: of Brazilian outrage at the Olympics, we are going to
Speaker 1: talk today about how we got from a golden member
Speaker 1: of emerging markets to where we are today in terms
Speaker 1: of Brazil. And we're going to do it slightly differently
Speaker 1: because we're going to look at it through the prism
Speaker 1: of people who got very, very rich through Brazil's rise
Speaker 1: and as it sort of entered the global economy, and
Speaker 1: with us to discuss that is Alex Quadras. He's actually
Speaker 1: a former Bloomberg reporter who has just written a fantastic
Speaker 1: book called Brazilionaires, The Godfathers of Modern Brazil, and it's
Speaker 1: all about Brazil's fries and the sort of larger than
Speaker 1: life personalities and extremely wealthy people that played a role
Speaker 1: in that. So it should be good. I can't wait.
Speaker 1: Let's get right started. Alex, Hi, thanks for joining us, Hi,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having me. So I suppose just
Speaker 1: to begin, um, do you maybe want to walk us
Speaker 1: through how you got started on the book. I know
Speaker 1: you were with the Bloomberg Billionaires team at the time.
Speaker 1: Tell us how it all began, right. So, Uh, billionaires
Speaker 1: weren't something that I'd ever really given much thought to
Speaker 1: before as a class of people. Uh. But Bloomberg had
Speaker 1: this brilliant idea in two thousand eleven to create a
Speaker 1: team of journalists that would exclusively cover the world's billionaires.
Speaker 1: You know. It was really the kind of beginning of
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist moment for discussions about inequality and how billionaires
Speaker 1: are coming out of the financial crash a lot better
Speaker 1: than everyone else and so on. I think that the
Speaker 1: team was formally being created right as Occupy Wall Street
Speaker 1: was setting up in in Zukkati Park. But I was
Speaker 1: living in Sampaulo already working for Bloomberg covering stocks. And
Speaker 1: because I spoke Spanish and Portuguese and could write in English,
Speaker 1: they asked me if I would be the guy for
Speaker 1: Latin America for this team. Uh, and I and I
Speaker 1: took it on. Uh. And as I studied these people, uh,
Speaker 1: these incredible, as you say, larger than life characters, I
Speaker 1: realized that I had a really unique window on two
Speaker 1: really important stories. And one of those stories was this
Speaker 1: boom that you were talking about in Brazil, this story
Speaker 1: of national ambition, the possibility that this country might finally
Speaker 1: be be tasting prosperity, and there were these people at
Speaker 1: the top of the pyramid who were especially benefiting from
Speaker 1: that wave. At the same time, I realized I had
Speaker 1: a window on something that was happening the world around,
Speaker 1: which was the rise of uh, you know, this new
Speaker 1: global class of billionaires and uh you know a story
Speaker 1: about how uh they relate to their own wealth, what
Speaker 1: maybe is the role of a billionaire in society. So
Speaker 1: as I did the job, I kind of took notes
Speaker 1: the whole way and eventually turned it into this book.
Speaker 1: The period in which you were covering billionaires for Bloomberg
Speaker 1: and several years around that seemed to be a huge period,
Speaker 1: not just for this study of billionaires and inequality, but
Speaker 1: Latin American billionaires in particular. There's obviously the rise of
Speaker 1: Ike Batista. Also, those were the years or around then
Speaker 1: Carlos Slim becoming one of the from Mexico becoming one
Speaker 1: of the world's richest people. At one point that looked
Speaker 1: like he was going to be the richest person in
Speaker 1: the world. What was distinct about this particular group of
Speaker 1: billionaires that you were covering, right, So absolutely it was
Speaker 1: a moment when it seemed like, uh, they were gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, the new engines of world growth would be
Speaker 1: these emerging markets, and uh Ike Bachista became not only
Speaker 1: Brazil's richest man during this time, but the world's eighth
Speaker 1: richest man. Were thirty billion dollars surfing this wave of
Speaker 1: enthusiasm about the country's economic prospects, you know, promising to uh,
Speaker 1: to build a company that would be the next Petro Brass,
Speaker 1: another company that would be the next Valley. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: this unprecedented industrial empire in Brazil that turned out to
Speaker 1: be a bubble, of course, because he didn't have much
Speaker 1: of what he said he did, and when that became clear,
Speaker 1: it all came crashing down. But he was he was
Speaker 1: kind of the most flashy of all of the figures,
Speaker 1: and maybe the closest to a more American style of entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: You know, he was a salesman. He loved to show
Speaker 1: off his wealth. He would invite reporters to his sprawling
Speaker 1: mansion and rio. He would show off his yachts, his jets.
Speaker 1: When when we were calculating his wealth for the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Billionaires indexes, people even sent photos of his yachts and
Speaker 1: jets and so on as kind of crob ringing. Well,
Speaker 1: he like a lot of billionaires are a lot of
Speaker 1: rich people in general tend to be coy and they
Speaker 1: don't make a big deal about their own personal wealth.
Speaker 1: But he talked very specifically about wanting to get to
Speaker 1: number one, and he knew where he was on the
Speaker 1: chart to billionaires at any given point absolutely, and in fact,
Speaker 1: um when we were putting together the Bloombird Billionaires Index,
Speaker 1: he was not happy with where we had him on
Speaker 1: the list. We had him at thirty billion dollars, which
Speaker 1: for most people I think would be fine. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be enough, but he felt that he should be
Speaker 1: several billion higher. And on the eve of the launch
Speaker 1: of the index, he actually called me up to harangue
Speaker 1: me about all the reasons why he should be higher
Speaker 1: on the list. Uh. And at a certain point cut
Speaker 1: into the harangue to ask him if he regretted having
Speaker 1: said that he would be the world's richest man within
Speaker 1: just a few years and uh, and he he responded,
Speaker 1: you know, very uh angrily, Jesus, Alex, You're so primitive,
Speaker 1: but then quickly switched back into pitch mode as was
Speaker 1: his way. And you know, this ostentation wasn't just fun
Speaker 1: and play, It was actually something meaningful to him. He
Speaker 1: had an ambition to change the way that people in
Speaker 1: Brazil thought about wealth. Uh. He thought that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: people don't admire entrepreneurs in Brazil. And this is partly
Speaker 1: because you know, all these headlines we see about corruption
Speaker 1: in Brazil. This is nothing new. This is the way
Speaker 1: that business and politics has always been done, and wealth
Speaker 1: in Brazil has always had this kind of taint, this
Speaker 1: this feeling that it's inherently dirty, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: change that, uh, that idea of wealth. And at a
Speaker 1: certain point in this conversation, he told me, you know,
Speaker 1: Brazilians have always admired the American dream. What we have
Speaker 1: now in Brazil is the Brazilian dream, and I happen
Speaker 1: to be the example of it. Brazil has one of
Speaker 1: the highest inequality rates in the world. Is there something
Speaker 1: specific about Brazilian culture, or society or the economy that
Speaker 1: kind of lends to that. Is it the sort of
Speaker 1: history of um, you know, one hand washes the other
Speaker 1: in terms of business that you're pointing out. Is it
Speaker 1: the sort of comfort with corruption? I guess is a
Speaker 1: terrible way of putting it. But historically that's what there's been. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well Brazil, uh, you know, unlike uh the United States,
Speaker 1: where uh, you know, the colonial development was really free wheeling,
Speaker 1: everything in Brazil happened in a very top down way,
Speaker 1: directed by the Portuguese crown. And so from the beginning, uh,
Speaker 1: the way to get ahead in Brazil was much more
Speaker 1: through personal connections than through say, actual business skills. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this idea of business and success as something you
Speaker 1: get through personal connections has prospered, and you know, it
Speaker 1: manifests in this kind of natural relationship with corruption. It's
Speaker 1: a country where the elites in business and in politics
Speaker 1: have been very successful at serving their own interests. Uh.
Speaker 1: Really you often at uh the cost of the public interest.
Speaker 1: And we see this, for example in the tax system.
Speaker 1: The tax system in Brazil is incredibly regressive. Dividends are
Speaker 1: completely untaxed. You know, even the United States, that bastion
Speaker 1: of socialism, uh, taxes dividends. So it's it's a structure
Speaker 1: that allows fortunes to maintain themselves over time. The inheritance
Speaker 1: taxes are also incredibly low. They talked about at four
Speaker 1: percent in most states, UM and interest rates are really high,
Speaker 1: which means that if you have money in the bank
Speaker 1: that you're not investing and putting to work, you can
Speaker 1: earn a tidy return above inflation without really doing anything.
Speaker 1: I want to get to how it all came tumbling
Speaker 1: down the economic bubble, and I use personal decline. But
Speaker 1: before I do that, you know, I think it is
Speaker 1: probably Um, the one brazilionaire that became an international name.
Speaker 1: Who else really stands out and what other characters Um
Speaker 1: should we know about. Well, he's definitely the best known
Speaker 1: because he really put himself out there so much. There's
Speaker 1: another guy who is now Brazil's richest man now that
Speaker 1: Ike has gone down in flames, UH named Georgie Paulo Lamon.
Speaker 1: He is really discreet and low profile, but Americans should
Speaker 1: know who he is and people around the world should
Speaker 1: know who he is because he and his partners control
Speaker 1: Anheuser Busch, in Bev, Burger, King Hines and Craft. And
Speaker 1: if you if you add up the market value of
Speaker 1: all those companies, I think it's bigger than Berkshire Hathaway,
Speaker 1: and Berkshire has partnered with them, right exactly. Warren Buffett
Speaker 1: is a friend of Lemon, and they have partnered to
Speaker 1: take over Hines and Craft. All right, well, Joe mentioned already.
Speaker 1: You know, we've been talking about the good times in Brazil.
Speaker 1: Everything was going great, These vast fortunes were made during
Speaker 1: the boom times. What happened to sort of make it
Speaker 1: all fall apart and to get to where we are now,
Speaker 1: where we have this big corruption scandal, we have the
Speaker 1: economy sort of teetering on the brink, and we have
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of outrage on the streets. A
Speaker 1: few different things. One is luck because this amazing commodities
Speaker 1: boom that happened, you know, a decade ago, because China's
Speaker 1: economy was going crazy. When that fizzled out, that was
Speaker 1: a big blow to Brazil because Brazil, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: is a major export of oil, iron, ore, beef, soybeans.
Speaker 1: But that's only part of the story. Uh. The other
Speaker 1: big part of the story is that President Jill mah Sef,
Speaker 1: who came into office in two thousand eleven, made major
Speaker 1: economic errors. Um. But I think there's a misconception about
Speaker 1: what kind of errors she made. I think when people
Speaker 1: think of the Workers Party Jima Lula, they think of
Speaker 1: social programs, and they think while they just spent way
Speaker 1: too much on redistribution, in fact, those that kind of
Speaker 1: spending was a much smaller piece of the puzzle than
Speaker 1: massive corporate subsidies that she and Lula handed out. And
Speaker 1: this was a really strange contradiction inside this ostensibly left
Speaker 1: wing movement that you know, wanted social justice. They also
Speaker 1: had this top down idea of economic development in Brazil,
Speaker 1: it's called jess Voltimine Cheese developmentalism, and ideas that the
Speaker 1: state kind of direct development by funneling subsidies to favored sectors.
Speaker 1: Problem is, they just funneled subsidies to everyone without much criteria,
Speaker 1: without much control, and Brazil State Development Bank, the b
Speaker 1: n d e S until recently, was lending out more
Speaker 1: justin Brazil than the World Bank lends out in the
Speaker 1: entire world. Was there a moment before it became apparent
Speaker 1: that it was all crashing where there were people sort
Speaker 1: of warning that this is all about to collapse, but
Speaker 1: people didn't heed it. Like I think back to Iceland
Speaker 1: and in the years before it collapsed, there were a
Speaker 1: few people saying this is completely unsustainable. There's a credit
Speaker 1: bubble here, this is all built on a House of cards.
Speaker 1: Was there sort of like some specific moment where people
Speaker 1: said something is wrong before it really took hold that
Speaker 1: it was all about to go down. You know, there
Speaker 1: may have been, but the chorus of uh, sort of
Speaker 1: euphoria about Brazil was so strong that those voices were
Speaker 1: really drowned out. If you consider I Kibachista maybe the
Speaker 1: canary in the coal mine for this crash in Brazil,
Speaker 1: there were voices of skepticism about him, people saying he
Speaker 1: doesn't actually have all that oil and all that iron
Speaker 1: ore and this is a giant bubble um. But you know,
Speaker 1: this was really a kind of heard instinct phenomenon like
Speaker 1: we see so often in you know, in the market,
Speaker 1: like we saw in with the dot com bubble or
Speaker 1: with the subprime mortgage bubble. You know, there were maybe
Speaker 1: voices of skepticism, but they were so few and far
Speaker 1: between that, you know, I think it was hard to
Speaker 1: hear them above the above the din. How much did
Speaker 1: you know in all these crashes, usually there's some element
Speaker 1: of over extending credit and lending that went bad. How
Speaker 1: big of a story was that in Brazil? The credit
Speaker 1: bubble aspect very big um and certainly in Ikibachista case, Uh,
Speaker 1: he was able to raise a lot of money in
Speaker 1: the bond market even though he had no revenues. And
Speaker 1: this was partly because money was cheap and people were
Speaker 1: hungry for returns. Uh. In Brazil's case, the country definitely
Speaker 1: took on way too much dead Uh. Jilma and her
Speaker 1: economic advisors thought that, Okay, the economy grew seven point
Speaker 1: five percent in two thousand and ten. You know, there's
Speaker 1: no way it's going to grow any less than five
Speaker 1: six percent over the next few years. And they borrowed accordingly,
Speaker 1: but you know, they didn't spend the money well. And
Speaker 1: that bill came due. And you know when when she
Speaker 1: narrowly eked out re election in two thousand fourteen, she
Speaker 1: immediately shifted to austerity. Uh, you know, and and that
Speaker 1: accentuated the economic drop that we've seen lately. So Alex,
Speaker 1: give us the sort of epilogue on Batista. We have
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for Brazil turned to fear. We have the bubble
Speaker 1: sort of bursting credit coming. Do what happens to him
Speaker 1: and billionaires like him, Do they get wealthier? Does inequality
Speaker 1: kind of become more concentrated? And the man on the
Speaker 1: street loses out or do they lose it all. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people are worried about how I
Speaker 1: Kibachista is doing now, so I want to put everyone
Speaker 1: at ease and say that he's doing just fine. Um.
Speaker 1: He lost thirty billion dollars, but he still lived very well.
Speaker 1: He at least until recently, was being paid a salary
Speaker 1: of five million dollars a year by UH, this sovereign
Speaker 1: wealth fund from Abu Dhabi. UH. And he still lives
Speaker 1: a lifestyle very similar to the one he lived when
Speaker 1: he was the world's eighth richest man. You still see
Speaker 1: his kids flying around and chartered jets. One of his
Speaker 1: kids is a dj you know, he's still djaying all
Speaker 1: over Brazil. There was a story about one of his
Speaker 1: like his Ferrari's being reseized, right am I hallucinating that? Well?
Speaker 1: Ike is UH and I'm on a first name basis
Speaker 1: with him, not because we're friends, but because that's in Brazil.
Speaker 1: He's just known by his first name Ike because he's
Speaker 1: such a such a big figure. Um. But he is
Speaker 1: facing charges of insider trading because he started selling shares
Speaker 1: in his oil company UH shortly before it announced that
Speaker 1: it was halting its operations. Um, you know, and prosecutors
Speaker 1: believe that constitutes insider trading. Uh. And at a certain
Speaker 1: point UH. Some of his assets were seized, including several
Speaker 1: very nice cars, a piano, even a Faberge egg that
Speaker 1: turned out to be fake. He had tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars and hard currency in his home. But the
Speaker 1: most surreal thing about this episode is that the judge
Speaker 1: who ordered the seizures actually for some reason took one
Speaker 1: of Ike's cars home with him, a Porsche Cayenne, and
Speaker 1: was found driving it around town. And he claimed that
Speaker 1: he does supposed that you are not supposed to do that.
Speaker 1: He's just right. Well, he claimed it was because he
Speaker 1: thought it could be damaged by rain in the impound lot,
Speaker 1: So it was really a selfless act. And they found
Speaker 1: ultimately that this judge had embezzled a lot of money
Speaker 1: from an unrelated, unrelated drug trafficking case, and he was
Speaker 1: taken off the case. So Ike's trial is now frozen.
Speaker 1: It has a new judge, but nothing has happened with it.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, he looks like he's trying to
Speaker 1: make his comeback, or at least some kind of comeback.
Speaker 1: He talks about a partnership he struck with a South
Speaker 1: Korean scientist who is famous for having faked the cloning
Speaker 1: of human stem cells, and they plan to build a
Speaker 1: lab to clone rare animals in Brazil. He has another
Speaker 1: partnership to make generic viagra that dissolves under your tongue,
Speaker 1: and a number of other businesses. Um. But he's working
Speaker 1: on raising money and I think that, you know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if he succeeds in raising money, and
Speaker 1: even if he returns to being a billionaire. I don't
Speaker 1: think he'll get to the level he was before, but
Speaker 1: I think he will. I think he'll come back. Is
Speaker 1: it wrong to say that I really admire that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, like someone completely collapsing and then just going
Speaker 1: right back at it, and I find it kind of impressive.
Speaker 1: I think there is there is something admirable about it.
Speaker 1: You know that that kind of persistence and perseverance at
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, that level of self belief
Speaker 1: becomes a problem when you put other people on the
Speaker 1: hook for it, right, And that was that was his
Speaker 1: big problem, was not you know, it wasn't just his
Speaker 1: money that went up and smoke when when he crashed
Speaker 1: and burned, it was not just investors money, you know,
Speaker 1: not just little mom and pop savers, but also public
Speaker 1: money because the Brazilian got through this massive development bank
Speaker 1: generously backed his ventures. So, Alex, one of the themes
Speaker 1: that you sort of explore in the book is whether
Speaker 1: or not having billionaires like you do in Brazil can
Speaker 1: end up being a good thing for society or a
Speaker 1: bad thing. And a lot of the wealthy people that
Speaker 1: you speak to are sort of at pains to emphasize
Speaker 1: that they do a lot of good for the community.
Speaker 1: Their wealth kind of trickles down to the poorer people.
Speaker 1: Where do you come out on that debate? Can they
Speaker 1: be good? They can be good, They can be a
Speaker 1: part of progress. Um, But I think that whenever you
Speaker 1: have concentrated wealth, uh, it becomes a danger. Uh. Not
Speaker 1: just for democracy because it can be you to influence
Speaker 1: public policy, but it can become a danger to the
Speaker 1: functioning of free markets when they accumulate enough market power, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to squash their competitors. That's not good for
Speaker 1: the economy as a whole. And you know what's what's interesting,
Speaker 1: And you know, when I talked to them, and I
Speaker 1: would ask, for example, uh Bla Domagi, who was a
Speaker 1: Soybeans billionaire senator, head of former head of the Senate's
Speaker 1: Environmental Committee, even though he was an agribusiness tycoon. I
Speaker 1: asked him if he felt uncomfortable being so rich in
Speaker 1: a country as poor as Brazil, and he said no, because,
Speaker 1: you know, his the company that his family runs creates
Speaker 1: jobs and provides tax revenue and so on, and he
Speaker 1: saw no conflict of interest even in the idea that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, an agribusiness tycoon. He was influential in environmental policy.
Speaker 1: And I think the point here is that uh, billionaires
Speaker 1: can be part of the progress of society. At the
Speaker 1: same time, I think that they can confuse their self
Speaker 1: interest and their own quest for expansion with the broader
Speaker 1: public interest. And that's really where the problems come in,
Speaker 1: because that idea, I think justifies uh, for example, putting
Speaker 1: money to work in the political system. Uh. So, to
Speaker 1: wrap up, are you optimistic about Brazil? Are in say
Speaker 1: ten years or twenty years, will they get or at
Speaker 1: some point will they actually achieve the prosperity that it
Speaker 1: looked like they might be achieving a few years ago.
Speaker 1: I think that by the same token that the euphoria
Speaker 1: around Brazil ill you know, a decade ago through two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, was excessive, I think that the pessimism
Speaker 1: now is also excessive. It's really hard to see the
Speaker 1: silver linings right now, and there are very few brazil
Speaker 1: Optimists out there, But I'm a stubborn brazil Optimist, and
Speaker 1: I think that some of the things that are happening now,
Speaker 1: even though they look really bad, are maybe the birth
Speaker 1: pangs of something new in Brazil. These corruption investigations, you know,
Speaker 1: are embarrassing and disruptive, and you know they're not going
Speaker 1: to They're not going to be uh smoothly resolved anytime soon,
Speaker 1: but they may be the start of a different relationship
Speaker 1: between the political class UH and the business world. So
Speaker 1: ten years I am, I am hopeful. I have to
Speaker 1: ask one more question, since we are dealing with brazilionaires, um, Alex,
Speaker 1: tell us what was the most outrageous thing that you
Speaker 1: experienced or heard about while you were researching for this
Speaker 1: book and doing the Brazilian billionaires beat. So when I
Speaker 1: was getting to know the billionaire world for Bloomberg, at
Speaker 1: one point I took a trip to Rio, and I
Speaker 1: asked a luxury real estate broker to show me his
Speaker 1: finest property, and he said, okay, but you have to
Speaker 1: pretend to be a potential buyer. So I was there
Speaker 1: faking being a billionaire. Uh. We arrived at this duplex
Speaker 1: penthouse right on i Panama Beach that cost point seven
Speaker 1: million dollars. We were shown around by a beach butler
Speaker 1: who wore shorts and flip flops. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: it was all maybe the kind of luxury you would expect.
Speaker 1: The in the master bedroom there was a panic button
Speaker 1: you could press and metal shutters would lower over the
Speaker 1: doors and windows. But what really shocked me in this
Speaker 1: place was when the butler led us into this room
Speaker 1: where there were these wavy bands of garish color on
Speaker 1: the walls, and it looked kind of tacky next to
Speaker 1: everything else. But the butler told me to look closer,
Speaker 1: and I leaned in and the color in each stripe
Speaker 1: the purple or orange, and each stripe was formed by
Speaker 1: thousands of exotic butterfly wings. And but the butler told me,
Speaker 1: you know, not to worry because they had all been
Speaker 1: environmentally certified, which means you're still in a bedroom filled
Speaker 1: with dead bugs though. That's all right, Alex. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us today. Thank you. I love
Speaker 1: that conversation, Tracy, especially having remembered and having thought about
Speaker 1: all of those years when people talked about how Brazil
Speaker 1: just had it made and it was impermeable to the
Speaker 1: concerns of the outside world. Getting the inside story of
Speaker 1: the huge turnaround, I thought it was fantastic. Yeah, It's
Speaker 1: funny how quickly things changed, because I remember back when
Speaker 1: I used to cover some of the big banks on
Speaker 1: Wall Street, they were so bullish on Brazil and bricks
Speaker 1: in general, and they were all setting up offices in
Speaker 1: the country, and then a lot of those offices had
Speaker 1: to close over the past year or two. So really
Speaker 1: stunning turnaround there. And it'll be interesting to see what
Speaker 1: happens um if the pessimism right now is overdone or
Speaker 1: if there's more pain to come. Who knows. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a great story too, I think, because
Speaker 1: it is this combination of a country's rise and fall
Speaker 1: coupled with these extraordinary characters. A lot of economies boom
Speaker 1: and bust, but I think Brazil had some sort of
Speaker 1: unique um, unique symbols or unique icons of the Boom
Speaker 1: that make it a particularly particularly compelling story. Absolutely all right,
Speaker 1: Well that's been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart and
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway. Thanks for listening.