41: Billionaires Help Tell the Story of Brazil's Boom and Bust

Tracy Alloway (0:07)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Odd Lots. I'm Tracy Alloway, Executive Editor of Bloomberg Markets.

Joe Weisenthal (0:13)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal, Managing Editor of Bloomberg Markets.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

So, Joe, have you been watching the Olympics at all?

Joe Weisenthal (0:20)

Yes, 100%, I love the Olympics.

I totally drink the Kool-Aid. I think it's amazing. I get obsessed about sports I would never otherwise get obsessed with. I'm a huge Olympics fan.

Tracy Alloway (0:32)

All right, so you know, obviously, it's taking place in Brazil this year, right?

Joe Weisenthal (0:36)

Absolutely, and, you know, unlike in past years, well, I guess every year, there's controversy leading up to the games about, is the country going to be ready? Was it worth it? Is it going to be an economic loss? But it definitely seems like those stories were much more dramatic this year.

For all kinds of reasons, it seems like the stories of unpreparedness were worse and the economic toll and the corruption, far worse in Brazil this year than in previous games, I would say.

Tracy Alloway (1:06)

Right. So you've obviously had a pretty vocal contingent of Brazilians who are voicing their outrage that they're hosting the Olympics. They're spending all this money on Olympic infrastructure and things like that. And that's in the middle of a massive government corruption scandal. It's also in the middle of a big economic slowdown for Brazil. So you can see how people would be more sensitive about the Olympics than they might otherwise be.

So it's quite a change if you think back to just five or six years ago to what Brazil looked like. You remember, Joe, Brazil was like the emerging market economy, right? It was like the golden member of the BRICS contingent. And it was doing everything right. Couldn't do any wrong. Things were going swimmingly.

Joe Weisenthal (1:52)

I remember that very vividly. I have this recollection of some TV story I saw from 2008, right? As our economy was in collapse and they were down in Brazil and the economy was booming and they said, Brazil hasn't completely figured out. It's not even dependent on the rest of the world because they don't need to import anything.

The economy is totally self-sufficient. It's thriving. And it seemed like Brazil was going to be the model for every other country to follow.

Tracy Alloway (2:25)

Right. So I should say in honor of the Olympics in Brazil or in honor of Brazilian outrage at the Olympics, we are going to talk today about how we got from a golden member of emerging markets to where we are today in terms of Brazil. And we're going to do it slightly differently because we're going to look at it through the prism of people who got very, very rich through Brazil's rise and as it sort of entered the global economy. And with us to discuss that is Alex Quadros. He is actually a former Bloomberg reporter who's just written a fantastic book called Brazilian Heirs, the Godfathers of Modern Brazil. And it's all about Brazil's rise and the sort of larger than life personalities and extremely wealthy people that played a role in that. So it should be good.

Joe Weisenthal (3:17)

I can't wait. Let's get right started. Let's get started.

Tracy Alloway (3:28)

Alex, hi, thanks for joining us.

Alex Cuadros (3:31)

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Tracy Alloway (3:33)

So I suppose, just to begin, do you maybe want to walk us through how you got started on the book? I know you were with the Bloomberg Billionaires team at the time.

Tell us how it all began.

Alex Cuadros (3:47)

Right, so billionaires weren't something that I'd ever really given much thought to before as a class of people.

But Bloomberg had this brilliant idea in 2011 to create a team of journalists that would exclusively cover the world's billionaires. It was really the beginning of the zeitgeist moment for discussions about inequality and how billionaires are coming out of the financial crash a lot better than everyone else. And so on, I think the team was formally being created right as Occupy Wall Street was setting up in Zuccotti Park. But I was living in Sao Paulo, already working for Bloomberg, covering stocks, and because I spoke Spanish and Portuguese and could write in English, they asked me if I would be the guy for Latin America for this team, and I took it on.

And as I studied these people, these incredible, as you say, larger than life characters, I realized that I had a really unique window on two really important stories. And one of those stories was this boom that you were talking about in Brazil, this story of national ambition, the possibility that this country might finally be tasting prosperity. And there were these people at the top of the pyramid who were especially benefiting from that wave. At the same time, I realized I had a window on something that was happening the world around, which was the rise of this new global class of billionaires and a story about how they relate to their own wealth, what maybe is the role of a billionaire in society. So as I did the job, I took notes the whole way and eventually turned it into this book.