Well-rounded and -researched portraits of the staggering chasm between rich and poor in Brazil.
On the trail of enormous wealth in Brazil—an engine of national progress or a trench of impoverishment?
As an American journalist for Bloomberg News based in São Paulo from 2010 to 2016, Cuadros became both fascinated and appalled by the excessive wealth he witnessed. While the Brazilian nouveau rich used to ape the styles of the French, now it is the United States via Miami, where much of the Latin American wealth is invested. In this “parallel universe” of billionaires, the author became acquainted with the “ladder of luxuries” such as private jets, rarefied art and cars, pricey real estate, and restaurants. In this universe, the names on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index needed to worry constantly about kidnapping and protection of family members. The two tried-and-true ways of getting rich in the Brazilian economy were by politics and/or public contracts, and while many of the billionaires Cuadros covers were mired in graft and corruption scandals, the Brazilian saying “Rouba mas faz” (he steals but he gets things done) sums up the public tolerance for them. Cuadros dutifully reveals many of the major players: Paulo Maluf, the force behind the building of the so-called Minhocão (Big Worm) freeway, has become a kind of poster boy for patronage; soy baron and former Mato Grosso Gov. Blairo Maggi routinely battled environmentalists over issues of deforestation; Roberto Marinho built the dominant Rede Globo TV network; Edir Macedo fashioned a massive Universal Church of the Kingdom of God from relentless tithing of the faithful; Eike Batista, head of OGX Petroleo e Gas, went from being the richest man in Brazil to bankrupt. The debt that many of these men owe to the acquiescence of the government, namely that of former populist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, is remarkable—e.g., what has come to light over the skimming of profits from the massive Belo Monte Dam.
Well-rounded and -researched portraits of the staggering chasm between rich and poor in Brazil.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9676-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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