CITY AND SUBURBAN
On candid camera with Rubens Ricupero the sound-bites are in the can
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Ihave snapped up Rubens Ricupero for my latest venture, City and Suburban Superhighways. This will be an on-line, real-time, on-screen, financial intelligence service, or to put that another way, a chat show. Mr Ricupero became available earli- er this week when he resigned as Brazil's finance minister after a dazzling display of televised candour. He was explaining to a journalist for TV Globo how he controls inflation, now running, officially, at 5.4 per cent a month. It was just a matter, so he said, of picking on the right statistics: 'I don't have any scruples. What is good, we use. What is bad, we hide.' He had to, because Brazilian businessmen were ban- dits. They put the prices up before each month's inflation figures and, when they saw them, blanched and put their prices up again. All this was broadcast, possibly by accident, and it was time for Mr Ricupero to bring his expository technique to a new audi- ence. He could compare notes with our pre- vious Chancellor on the things that finance ministers have to say when they defend the indefensible. I look forward to candid exchanges. Indeed, I can reveal that he has started work already and that some of the early sound-bites are already in the can.
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