There is the bottom-line, spreadsheet way of doing business in quiet boardrooms. And there’s the Latin Way. Knowing the difference between the two is a big factor behind what has been dubbed the reconquista of Latin America by Spain. And this time the weapon of choice of the conquistadores is the peseta rather than the sword. In what has become the world’s hottest spot for foreign investors, Spaniards have a head start over competitors, says Sergio Aranda Moreno, CEO of Spanish-owned Gas Natural México. Explaining the Latin way of wheeling and dealing, he says, “Sometimes I come out of a meeting and a colleage says, ‘Phew, what a bloodbath!’ Yet on the the surface, everything was warm and polite. Someone from another culture would never have noticed the battle going on behind the scenes.”

But anyone who is numerate can see the fallout from those deals. Big spending by foreign companies in Latin America and the Caribbean has catapulted outside investment into the region by an estimated 33% last year, to $97 billion, surpassing that in Asia by $13 billion. And the foreigners doing the most moving and shaking come from one of the region’s old colonial powers. In telecommunications, banking, energy supply – even marketing fish and collecting trash – Spaniards are “invading” Latin America with more force and flair than anyone else. Juan Villalonga, president of Spain’s communications giant Telefónica, says Spaniards doing business in Latin America these days feel “como Pedro por su casa,” or like Pedro at home – which is about as comfortable as a Spaniard gets.

The Spanish-led push has helped Europe turn the investment tables on Latin America’s longtime financial Big Brother, the U.S. Of the 25 largest foreign companies in Latin America in 1998, on the basis of consolidated sales, 14 were European and 11 were from the U.S., with Spain’s Telefónica now the region’s biggest communications operator.

In other markets dear to the U.S. heart, Spanish firms have muscled themselves into preferred positions. Sergio Aranda says that when the Mexican government opened its natural-gas market five years ago, U.S.-based companies were expected to dominate, given their proximity. But it didn’t turn out that way. Gas Natural México, set up by an affiliate of Spain’s petroleum giant Repsol, today has about 10 times as many customers as its U.S. rivals. And in March, Aranda made another coup. Gas Natural bought from Texas utilities the right to supply gas in Mexico City, converting the Spanish company into by far the dominant force in Mexico’s gas market.

Aranda says language alone doesn’t explain the Spaniard’s surge. The affinities that give Spanish firms an edge run deeper. “American businessmen have a 9-to-5 culture,” he says. “Here, where personal contact is so important, it’s a constant round of lunches and dinners. That’s the way we do business in Spain too. The Americans are also much more direct. Like the Mexicans, we skirt around the issues, often making our point indirectly.”

Like Spaniards in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and many other Latin American countries, Aranda doesn’t sense any resentment in the region of the 21st century conquistadores. Questions do arise in some countries about concentration of ownership. But Aranda says, “I feel more than welcome here.” (“New World Conquests,” Time magazine, May 8, 2000: 22-27).

According to the text, Mr Aranda:

Item 2: feels he is welcome in Latin America.

FIRST TEXT

Sympathetic writers talk of Marx’s passionate empathy toward the working class, his demands for a decent wage and improved working conditions, and his great feeling for his family’s welfare. In this respect, Marx is an enigma. In the classroom’s most popular book on the history of economics, Robert L. Heilbroner writes that, despite his reputation as a contentious and vengeful man who feuded constantly with his contemporaries, Marx was a devoted husband and father. In a sympathetic biography, Saul K. Padover notes, “Marx, the harsh critic and angry radical in his public life and writings, was a different man in private. In his personal life, he was extraordinarily kind and generous and, when not tormented by illnesses, gay. . . . [As a] self-assured male, Marx has a genuine affection and esteem for women. . . . [And] Jenny was the only woman in his life.”

Apologists for Marx are almost always blind to the darker side of the creator of communism. They write of his devotion to his family and his love letters to his wife but ignore or condone his illicit affair with the family’s household servant, Lenchen, which produced an illegitimate son whom Marx would have nothing to do with. Interestingly, Marx also never paid this servant a penny for her housework.

Karl and Jenny Marx were poverty-stricken but not for want of money. They received large sums over the years from Engels, other supporters, and from Marx’s writings. One estimate is that Marx was poor only 15 years of his 65-year career, and that his income placed him in the top 5 percent of London residents in the 1860s. But the Marxes were financially incompetent and could not control their spending habits. Marx entertained lavishly, speculated on the stock market, and spent large sums on liquor, books, travel, and other consumer goods until he had to beg for more or borrow from pawnshops at usury rates. Such irresponsible spending habits often left his family starving, destitute, and in ill health. Marx’s family life was often a nightmare, resulting in the early death or eventual suicide of most of his children. Historian Robert Payne, in his biography of Marx, concludes, “He exploited everyone around him – his wife, his children, his mistress and his friends – with a ruthlessness which was all the more terrible because it was deliberate and calculating.” (“Was Marx a Good Family Man?” Skousen, Marx, Economics on Trial: Lies, Myths, and Realities. Business One Irwin, Homewood, Ill, 1991: 212-213).

According to the text:

Item 0: The Marxes were poverty-stricken because they did not like money.

Seja o processo auto-regressivo: !$ y_t=Φ _1 y_{t-1} + ε _t !$. Pode-se afirmar que:

Item 2: O estimador de mínimos quadrados ordinários do parâmetro !$ Φ_1 !$ é não tendencioso.

A política de valorização do café definida pelo Convênio de Taubaté em 1906:

Item 4: eliminou do mercado brasileiro os produtores ineficientes.

As idéias da CEPAL exerceram influência importante sobre a política econômica brasileira, sobretudo nos anos 50. Podemos associar ao ideário Cepalino:

Item 3: a teoria inercialista da inflação;