Paulo Nogueira Batista is one of Brazil’s most prominent, influential, and instrumental economists. Paulo was vice president of the New Development Bank, established by the BRICS in Shanghai, from 2015 to 2017, and Executive Director at the IMF for Brazil and 10 other countries in Washington, from 2007 through 2015.
Paulo, as you'll hear/see, and as his bio clearly documents, is a sober, sophisticated, accomplished global intellectual, actor, and statesman -- someone who thinks deeply and carefully before he speaks. Hence, when he pens a column entitled, "Brazil is Running an Existential Risk," which I reposted in Economics Matters last week, about Brazil's need to obtain nuclear weapons, it's time to sit up and listen.
Take a read of Paulo's column and ponder the meaning of his quote of Clemenceau, “The United States is the first to pass from barbarism to decadence without knowing civilization.” Then watch/listen to this extraordinary podcast.
Economics Matters with Laurence Kotlikoff