Devouring the Heart of Portugal
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Devouring the Heart of Portugal
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Re: Devouring the Heart of Portugal
#2The podcast is one of my absolute favorites.
Re: Devouring the Heart of Portugal
#3I love books about fraud and The Man Who Stole Portugal by Murray Bloom is one of my favourites.
This is also a story about how Artur Alves dos Reis sparked growth by injecting money into the Portuguese economy.
Re: Devouring the Heart of Portugal
#4It's amazing how some people are so optimistic and self-confident that they are simply incapable of learning. Reis kept going for "easy money" and risky ventures until the end. Complete lack of moral character aside, he apparently never accepted that, given the way in which he approached things by cutting all sorts of corners, the fallout from his failing schemes kept destroying the gains from his successful schemes, both for himself and for others.
Re: Devouring the Heart of Portugal
#5It's amazing how some people are so optimistic and self-confident that they are simply incapable of learning. Reis kept going for "easy money" and risky ventures until the end. Complete lack of moral character aside, he apparently never accepted that, given the way in which he approached things by cutting all sorts of corners, the fallout from his failing schemes kept destroying the gains from his successful schemes,…
Really? If he was a (legit) serial entrepreneur we'd be lauding him for his grit here on HN. And he almost pulled off his final "fake it till you make it" unicorn scheme too: if he had wrested control over the Bank of Portugal, he could have retroactively legitimized everything he did.
Re: Devouring the Heart of Portugal
#6It's amazing how some people are so optimistic and self-confident that they are simply incapable of learning. Reis kept going for "easy money" and risky ventures until the end. Complete lack of moral character aside, he apparently never accepted that, given the way in which he approached things by cutting all sorts of corners, the fallout from his failing schemes kept destroying the gains from his successful schemes,…
Really? If he was a (legit) serial entrepreneur we'd be lauding him for his grit here on HN. And he almost pulled off his final "fake it till you make it" unicorn scheme too: if he had wrested control over the Bank of Portugal, he could have retroactively legitimized everything he did.
First, at least his big scheme wasn't "fake it till you make it"; it was explicitly and intentionally criminal from the beginning.
Second, I doubt whether serial delusions of grandeur would be unanimously lauded on HN.
Re: Devouring the Heart of Portugal
#7Great read, that feels oddly timely as I just returned from a months stay in Portugal. Fantastic place and people.
"He then sent the required funds to his National City Bank account by wire transfer, all while the paper checks were still bobbing across the Atlantic."
Does anyone know the proceedure that financial institutions used back then to confirm wire transfers (as in all the steps involved, including acks)?
Re: Devouring the Heart of Portugal
#8[deleted]
Re: Devouring the Heart of Portugal
#9If this is the history of a very smart but unsuccessful fraud scheme, I can't imagine the number of successful fraud schemes that had pass undetected and had build our society or history by gaining legitimacy afterwards. All these people in the money gathering way of life (seems more of a religion) are governing the lives of the rest of us leading our wills to wars or to dedicate all of our life span to work in unfathomable tasks.
Re: Devouring the Heart of Portugal
#10If this is the history of a very smart but unsuccessful fraud scheme, I can't imagine the number of successful fraud schemes that had pass undetected and had build our society or history by gaining legitimacy afterwards. All these people in the money gathering way of life (seems more of a religion) are governing the lives of the rest of us leading our wills to wars or to dedicate all of our life span to work in unfat…
Raise your hand if you have worked hard building an honest product that does what it says, only to see another business rise up to claim the same thing but based on smoke and mirrors. Must be an age-old trick, maybe akin to the octopus pretending to be a plant so it can catch prey, or the angler fish's glowing trap in the dark.