Welcome And Travel-Led Economics

George 0:00

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Equitile Conversations. Today we have uh two good friends of mine. We have Gerald as usual, and we also have Richard. Gerald and Richard have both been lucky enough to be uh to have been away on rather exotic holidays recently, and in the process of those holidays made some rather interesting observations on the economic performance of different regions of the world and how those regions are comparing with the economic performance or lack thereof of the UK. Richard particularly has written some uh some rather fantastic blogs on uh on the performance of economies in Southeast Asia, which is what uh sparked us to uh to have the idea of of getting the pair of them together to discuss uh what they'd learned. Richard, I'll I'll hand over to you first to to give us a few thoughts of what you saw and how it contrasts with uh with Britain, both when you left and when you came back.

Richard 1:07

Thanks very much, George. Yeah, this could easily run into a monologue if I'm left. So I think I'm gonna have to break it into chunks so that uh I can interact with Gerald without getting carried away on this one. Um so the first top-level feeling I think anyone's felt when they've headed out to the Far East from Gatwick or or uh or Heathrow or any UK airport is what you land in. You may be expecting to land in what were called the emerging markets, but you arrive in an airport that looks like a starship, beautifully working, no cues, absolutely wonderful. And that's the first shock you have to your system, that uh this may not be as emerging as you think, and might be a bit more emerged. When you get out the door, uh certainly arriving into Vietnam more than the other Far East countries I've been to, you're hit by the dynamism, the noise, the frenetic go of the whole place. Um, when I landed at Hanoi, we were on our way into in from the airport, and our guide apologized, even though it was only 5.30 in the morning for the amount of traffic that was going to be on the roads, and said it was going to be due to the holidays that were coming up. So naturally I said, Oh what, everyone's heading off early for their holidays, are they? And this is the first lesson of the difference that I learned was his answer. It was, no, they're not going on holiday. They're going to work earlier for the days running up to the holiday, so that they've made up earnings to pay for the holiday. Now swing that through into what happens in the UK, where holidays coming up, the roads are busy because we're all heading off early, skiving off work a bit early and charging off. The incentive's completely the other way around. They know that they have to earn first before they spend, whereas we have the expected entitlement of a holiday, and we don't have to contribute anything for that actually holiday. And that was sort of reflected through the whole of the structure I saw in Vietnam. It was you work hard now to spend later. A top-level observation, you look at the UK or even you look at the debt structure of the Western Western societies, we enjoy it now, we pay later. So that was the top level level observation. But Gerald, I'll let I'll let you take over before I go on about it.

Gerald 3:28

Yeah, I'll uh just uh amplify that really. I mean, I had it exactly the same experience. Um, I went via Singapore, which is obviously very much leading edge place, but it it didn't feel dramatically uh down or uh a downgrade to go to Hanoi. Obviously, Hanoi is nowhere near as wealthy, but in terms of dynamism and and activity, uh it it is, as you say, an incredibly busy and uh entrepreneurial place. It becomes very obvious very soon that it, if you like, they're a nation of shopkeepers, you know, in Napoleon's old um bitchy remark about the English. Um, in fact, and you know, in a way, is Vietnam a bit like a sort of emerging England in the 19th century. Um, obviously there'll be differences, but it seems similar in a way.

George 4:29

I I was just gonna say, Richard, so I mean, what you've said is really interesting. I just sort of like to emphasize that point before we carry on, that you've got an economy there that's doing deferred gratification. They're trying to earn the money now for future benefit. Whereas in the West, just by the virtue of the amount of debt we've accumulated in our economy, we must be doing exactly the opposite. We're we're live we're living off the future.

Richard 4:59

Correct.

George 5:00

We're borrowing.

Communist Capitalism Meets UK Rules

Gerald 5:01

Also, I would say that um uh in Britain there's this sort of feeling, oh, we are a very wealthy nation. We keep uh hearing from various commentators across the political spectrum that we're a very wealthy nation, we can afford to do this, that, and the other, whilst blithely not taking much notice of the enormous amount of debt we've managed to accumulate. I think just to widen it slightly, Richard, I know what what your feeling is that I I felt that Vietnam, in a in a sense, is two countries, uh not north and south, but the political Vietnam and the economic Vietnam. And I have to say I didn't see very much of the politics. Obviously, there's a lot of hammer and sickle flags, particularly in Hanoi, but the political ruling elite are pretty much invisible. It was only when I got back that I even knew that it was a committee of four generals that pretty much ran things. Um, so you don't see the political side at all, whereas the economic side of Vietnam is absolutely front-center and in your face all the time. Yeah, you're right. I mean, when we arrived in Hanoi and uh and went for the first quick walk, it was as though you were back in in Leninist Russia, growing grand parades, statues of Lenin up, uh hammers and sickles everywhere, vast mausoleums, or or the one famous vast mausoleum, shall we say, to Ho Chi Minh. Um, but that really did seem to reside only in Hanoi, which is the political capital of it. But next to that, you know, Hanoi struck me as the sort of most vibrant and earthy of the cities I went to compared to Saigon, which downtown Saigon had the feeling of Singapore to it. Uh, but Hanoi was sort of misty murk hanging over it and motorbikes and chaos. But you're absolutely right in that differentiation between the political and the economic feeling. If you think you're arriving in a communist country, we tend to frame uh communist economies much because we're from Europe as what Russia was like. So you had a command economy, controlling prices, and hence all the disasters we saw economically that ultimately led to its downfall. But Vietnam's much more on the Chinese model, where the underlying populace are allowed to run free on a business basis, to the point that you could say that you've got a sort of economy that runs on a form of communist capitalism. Whereas in the West we we are meant to be capitalist, but yet we have a growing level of socialism coming underneath. So the clearest contrast is you could probably call Vietnam uh communist capitalism, and what we're encountering here is capitalist socialism. But the dynamics you get and the incentives you get to drive things forward are noticeably different. Once you liberate the people in the economy and let them thrive on what appear to be minimum regulations, and that harks back to uh what you actually see when you're there, you don't see signs telling you what to do, you don't see policemen on the street controlling the traffic, which is quite extraordinary considering the whole thing is rife with motorbikes nearly crashing into each other. And then you wonder, well, have these people managed to survive without signs, controls, obvious regulations when the UK seems hell-bent on enforcing them on us for our own safety. So if you're looking at your own safety, it doesn't get much more apparent than when a thousand motorbikes are hitting the same junction from different directions, and yet they survive. And why is it? I think it's because the personal responsibility has been returned to the individual. They have to stay aware, they have to react to what's around them, and they have to take responsibility, and therefore they're more careful and they don't crash.

Richard 9:03

Yeah, I I was sort of struck slightly of the parallels with um China under Deng Xiaoping, where again the political side is very much under the control of the uh uh of the Communist Party of China. But in his famous phrase, he said, let every flower bloom, and it was all you know a free-for-all in terms of commerce. So it seems a very similar parallel, I would have thought.

George 9:32

It seems, Richard, to me, that you're you're describing a fascinating situation where the the country is notionally communist, which we tend to associate with central planning, but really it's running almost a libertarian economy, which seems to be self-organizing in a in a way that the libertarians would argue is is optimal.

Richard 9:56

Well, there is one caveat. I only saw it from the street level. So I'm looking at individuals on that base level. I can't comment for where that pyramid of control moves into the state function. I would imagine that the super na supranational um car companies, the big companies, are impacted by direct political control. But that is far enough above that it doesn't impact on the incentives of the workers to strive. Yeah. So I think that could that could be the difference. I mean, the most amazing juxtaposition I saw was on a uh boarding card I had when I got on the flight from Hanoi to well, like they call most of them call it Saigon now. So I'm actually going to call it Saigon, but you're meant to call it Ho Chi Minh City if you're in the West, but out there they all call it Saigon anyway. Um, but I was upgraded to business. So I had a business class boarding pass, which had business class written on it, and at the end of it was a hammer and sickle. Now, that for me was the greatest juxtaposition that summed up Vietnam for me that I could could see.

George 11:01

I heard a brilliant line uh a couple of years ago uh describing the contrast between Japan and China, which I think could be apt to this situation. And the the person who said it said basically Japan is essentially a socialist society that had capitalism thrust upon it, whereas China is basically a capitalist society that had communism thrust upon it. And it it sounds to me like what you're describing, Richard, is is very much like another version of China. It's instinctively a very vibrant capitalist society that that had an alien struct an alien political structure imposed on it.

Argentina As A Recovering Economy

Richard 11:50

I I mean also you've got that whole sort of Confucian thing of centralization of uh politics, you know. China with a a very small slice of history, has always been some form of dictatorship, either emperors or the um uh the Communist Party uh running things. There was 20 or 30 years of a sort of republic, but it it didn't really last. Um

Gerald 12:17

I want I'm gonna widen things slightly and maybe compare and contrast with my experience in Argentina. Now, Argentina again is slightly different in all of this because they've, if you like, emerged from a very, very centralist, top-down and in times military dictatorship, uh, and are now sort of maybe back on the up. Just to give you guys a little bit of history to this, um, it was a well-known phrase before the First World War to talk about somebody as being as rich as an Argentine. It was the third richest country in the world for a period of time, uh, until the United States came rapidly up, growing uh for the end of the 19th century. Now, under General Peron in the mid-1940s, he completely up-ended everything and went to a very, very heavy-duty socialism top-down system that is now starting to be dismantled a little bit, but you don't get the same feeling of vibrancy and uh sort of urgency almost for business that that you do in Vietnam. So um one of the reasons for doing this talk was to say, well, you know, you've got to be careful when you talk about emerging markets because they're all very different. In a way, Argentina's not an emerging market, it's a recovering market. A re-emerging market. I suppose so, but I don't think it's gonna be on the same on the same trajectory. I think it will improve and it will find its place in the world, but it doesn't have that go-go feel uh that Vietnam had.

George 14:04

Where are we? Where's the UK relative to these economies in in Southeast Asia and Latin America?

Gerald 14:11

Well, well, when you look at the hard numbers, George, I mean you you you know you can find numbers that that prove anything. But if you look at GDP growth per capita, which is always important to look at per capita, in dollar terms, the UK is about 80,000. Um, Argentina is at about 33,000. And believe it or not, Vietnam is only at 16,000. Uh, my bet would be that uh Vietnam will scoot past Argentina pretty rapidly, and I think GDP growth uh per capita in the UK, you can argue, has been going down. Um, it certainly hasn't been going up.

Growth Data FDI And Market Access

Richard 14:52

I think I've seen projections, I can't remember which body it was, projecting that Vietnam's probably going to have the fastest growth of GDP over the next couple of years in the world. And I can sort of see it. But George, back to your question about where you stand, Gerald sort of covered the economic data, but as a feeling that you could project over the whole thing, is that Vietnam is pretty much what the UK was as far as attitude and drive about 200 years ago. Um, it's in that growth phase. It isn't worrying about regulations, eco-conservatism. Um, its primary mission is growth. And if it something doesn't benefit human their humanity, they don't care as long as uh they grow. I mean, the example was I think uh we went to see some batcaves. Now, this may sound a bit strange to move into, uh, but it reflected their attitude of where humanity set against new sat against nature. So we were walking through this thing. First thing they say is um, there's some batcaves do you want to go in? Now in the UK, you would probably have to wear a hard hat, you would have to sign an indemnity form, uh, the person taking you in would have had to be on a safety course, uh, to the point that it just wasn't worth opening up the caves at all. Here it was just, do you want to go in? And we say yes, and in we went. So these marvelous stallic type clad caves were entered, and my wife after a bit said, Well, where are the bats? And they said, Oh, we've moved the bats. So, why? Well, we don't want to harm the humans. Now, take that as a twist against what you get in the UK, where you move the humans before you move the bats, and that was reflective across everything. You know, if a mountain's in the way uh where you want to build a road, you knock the mountain down. They've got lots of mountains, so what's another one to go? So this whole attitude towards regulation and slowdown and reflective. The UK, you can sum up as being conservative. I don't mean that in a political way, but it's wanting to conserve what it's had financially and in the world, what it's had politically in the world, and it's sort of defending its status, and it wants to conserve the memories, and that's the ecology and everything. Over there, conservatism doesn't matter because they are not conserving anything apart from their culture, they want to grow to have something to conserve. Um,

Gerald 17:22

one one other number, um, being a bit nerdy, I looked it up. Uh, and it this sort of plays to the dynamism is to look at foreign direct investment. And um, there is little or no foreign direct investment in Argentina at the moment. I say little or none. There are there are great plans for uh very invest uh new investments coming in, particularly in the energy and and mineral sector. People who like to follow these things, they may be sitting on a huge amount of lithium. So we will see maybe more extraction going on in Argentina. But the amount of foreign direct investment in Vietnam is off the gauges. Last year it was $38 billion, and it's uh expected to be over 50 billion per year over the next two or three. So that importing of capital is sort of going to um give huge fuel uh to the dynamism. So I I suppose um I'm talking myself into the view, well, I have the view that Vietnam is a serious place in terms of investment and where it's going to.

Richard 18:36

The only problem uh with trying to invest there is actually finding something public to buy. And you've touched on the the direct investment. But I remember looking at Vietnam years ago, and I'm not quite sure if it still applies. People would buy Vietnam Index because they thought they were getting exposure to Vietnam, but the but the public exchange was so limited, they suddenly found themselves owning 50% of the only dairy company in Vietnam because that was the comp most of the component of the index. Uh so it's still hard to get access directly.

Gerald 19:10

Another stat, and then I'll stop sort of referring to my cheat sheet, is that 30% of the Vietnamese economy is still nationalized. They have a lot of plans to actually denationalize and float bits of things off. And somewhat to my surprise, Argentina is only 10%. I think there are other methods of control that were used by Peran and the generals. A huge amount of corruption in Argentina, even to this day. Um in in world rankings um of about 120 countries, Argentina ranks as 104 in corruption. Vietnam's far from perfect, but at least it's 81. And to put it in some sort of context, Britain is in the low 20s. But the money is definitely hunting towards Vietnam because of that whole Southeast Asia um dynamic, anyhow. And I think that's also important. We come onto this in a few minutes, maybe, is it's not just dynam, uh it's not just Vietnam alone. It's a fact is in a cluster of of economies that are going places, of which it is in the lead, in my view.

Geography Trade And Economic Mindset

Richard 20:27

The other noticeable thing a bit about Vietnam is how they sweat their assets. And I'm speaking as a tourist, I suppose. There's a Ha Long Bay is a very famous, beautiful area you can cruise around. Um But unlike the UK, where luxury travel has now verged into the personal experience. Uh it's down to the individual. There they've effectively containerized luxury transport. Our experience was a luxury ship where all of the all of the little accoutrements you would want of luxury are in your cabin and you're served well. You look out to port and the beautiful limestone pillars drift by, and then you look out to starboard, and there's a flotilla of identical ships doing exactly the same thing. And I suppose the analogy I'd have is it's a bit like flying first class. You're sat in a luxurious seat with great service around you, but you're still in a metal container that is commercialized for profit. And that's how they do it. Um, everything is angled, as I say, monetized efficiently, which was really quite interesting because they managed to can they manage to scale luxury travel, which few other countries can do. One other

Gerald 21:49

observation, and I'm um I think both of you know I'm quite a fan of the journalist and commentator Tim Marshall, who's written a number of interesting books on. On the importance of geography in terms of geopolitics and also in terms of economics. And he he makes the point that Argentina, in geographic terms, at one level, uh is extremely well placed, in that it it's it okay, it's got one large neighbor, but it is not in Brazil, but it is not overwhelmed by them. And it has a it it's a sufficient size to be dynamic on its own. But the thing that struck me uh about being in South America in general, having also been in Uruguay, is it's a hell of a long way from anywhere else. Uh people who haven't been there, Buenos Aires is south of Cape Town. It is an extraordinarily long way. Uh, a direct flight uh from London to Buenos Aires is over 15 hours, and you get the feeling that as a result, although it's a huge country, it's ever so slightly isolationist. Now you compare that with um Vietnam, where Tim Marshall's view is that Vietnam should be a sticky wicket because it's very much dominated by China, and you know what what China says in the region goes. However, um I was struck by the fact that Vietnam has always had a sort of entrepreneurial uh DNA because they're natural traders. So they they they trade with Japan, they trade with China, and they trade with the other Southeast Asian countries, and have done so for thousands of years, and were also extremely open to uh traders from Portugal uh and particularly uh Spain and the Dutch in the 17th century. So there's a in a way, there's a a state of mind as well, in that I I I thought South America was more inwardly looking, uh almost a little bit like isolationist uh thread in United that we can do it all here, we don't need to worry about anything else. Whereas in Vietnam, it's quite clear you've got to be buying and selling and trading with anybody you um you can get your hands on. And I I think that might be an important dynamic actually.

George 24:24

Did you get a feel for their vast natural resources while you were there? And did you think they they settle back on the fact that they can produce so much themselves they don't have to trade?

Gerald 24:35

I I think I think that is that is very much was the case in the past, where very dictatorial governments said, Well, we you know, we can do what we like, we don't need to bother about anybody else. Funnily enough, uh, everybody wants to tell you the statistic that there are 45 million population in Argentina, and there are 55 million head of cattle. And actually, the cattle side of thing is quite a small part of their economy. They're very big in uh grains and cereals, and they're extremely big in energy and uh extracting minerals, but again, I think that they're they're using it for themselves and for then their neighbors. It it's such a long way to transport anything, um, and they're not geared up for it.

George 25:26

If I sort of listen into the pair of you think about this from a sort of investment perspective, it sounds to me that you know Argentina under Millet it feels like it might be recovering from having a sort of noose around its neck or a you know a weight on its back or or some analogy like that. But it it doesn't have the vibrance of Southeast Asia, so things might get better, it might be a decent growth story, but it's not it's not the sort of um the Victorian England dynamism that we're seeing in Southeast Asia.

Gerald 26:08

Yeah, I I I think that's right, George. Yeah, I think that's right, George. It's a recovering patient. Uh, whereas, okay, you could say there'd been very uh brutal times under the French uh in Vietnam, and then obviously there was the Vietnam, well, then the Civil War, then the Vietnam War, and then a very, very uh strict brutal military dictatorship in the first two or three decades after the Vietnam War. But they have been let loose and are looking to spring upwards and with energy, whereas, as I say, Argentina feels much more, oh great, we can now recover a certain amount.

George 26:52

Richard, you you mentioned that you were struck by the the lack of rules or the apparent lack of rules in in Vietnam and how that seemed to let everybody get on. But crucially, also you said it it lets them get on with things, but it also forces them to take responsibility.

Richard 27:12

Absolutely. I mean the incentives for personal responsibility were everywhere. I was amazed to find out that car insurance isn't obligatory and few have it. And asking friends who lived there, well, how a how a moped crash is sorted out, and the answers with a lot of shouting and a water cash. So even the negotiation at that level came down to personal interactions with those around it rather than going into the system. And talking of systems, I think the big difference is who the system's built for. You know, in the UK, systems are designed around the average person. Risk is always reduced, outcomes are smoothed, you know, volatility is minimized. But that may create comfort and predictabil uh sort of predictability, but it also sort of flattens the system. So you don't have the highs and lows. I think it's someone once told me who was on antidepressants, maybe we're on those. You know, it knocks out the it knocks out the lows, but it also knocks out the highs. You know, the system we've got for averaging does reduce variation and probably within it also the movement that's required. Whereas Vietnam feels very different. It's not sort of designed to be smooth, there's a lot more friction and more unevenness and more variation, but that does allow people to to move.

George 28:31

Can I challenge you with a question, Richard? And I'm not sure I'm gonna like the answer. But um the the question I want to ask you is is the vibrance and the the lack of rules in Vietnam, is that coming from essentially because they're coming out of a situation of relative extreme poverty? So is the vibrance coming from the poverty or is it coming from the lack of rules? And and the reason I want to ask that is when we look at the UK, where we seem to have lost our growth energy, do you did you get a sense that we could perhaps get that back if we did strip away the rules? Or are we just too rich and lazy, regardless?

Richard 29:18

I think that's a tipping point. Um, once everyone becomes dependent on the rules, they're not going to vote against the rules. Uh back to your original question about Vietnam, though. I think that's very valid. Um, but maybe the same thing is driving it. If you have no safety net, you're going to try and get high enough off, uh, you know, high enough up not to need the safety net. So, yes, poverty does drive people to be able to eat day to day. Um, but the lack of rules provides the environment for them to thrive within. Now, there is one big caveat here. I saw it as a tourist. Now, I don't know where the rules were set in. And speaking to one or two, they'd say, Yes, we are being watched. We do know the rules. They're locally policed. You don't see them around, but we know they're there. So we are being careful. So perhaps it was the the lens through which I saw it as well. There is a set of social rules, obviously, but they aren't signed. And you know, that that comes down to the difference with us. We have to signal rules. In the UK, there's a policeman on the street, you have to behave. Over there, there isn't a policeman on the street, and they they're more likely to say, oh gosh, we can't see him, we'd better be careful. So the signaling thing is different.

Healthcare Incentives And The NHS

George 30:40

That's really interesting, Richard. I'm I'm struck by some parallels with what you've just said, with an observation that um that I heard uh just this weekend um from uh a healthcare expert, actually. He is a very experienced gentleman in the pharmaceutical and healthcare space, and he was talking about the NHS, the healthcare outcome for British people generally. And he made an almost throwaway comment which really struck me. He said, Well, of course, it's disastrous for the British people that the NHS is free, because when it's free, you don't value it. And that means you know, you don't value your health. So people are not looking after their own health because they think they've got free health care, and as a result, we're actually ending up with a worse outcome than we could have if we were paying a bit for our health care, which just struck me as a very interesting behavioral observation, which chimes a little bit with what you've just said.

Richard 31:52

Yeah, it's interesting. I inquired about the the uh health service in Vietnam, and despite being communist, no, they don't have an NHS style system. It's still insurance-based. So there is still a contribution you have to make if you go into hospital. So they've effectively avoided the trap that the NHS has, which you've just expressed, which I suppose if you're I'll get into trouble with economists here who will argue about elasticity on the top level, if if uh if something's free, demands infinite, which is what you're sort of hitting on in a way. Um, but there there is the incentive to keep themselves well because they know there is a little bit of a cost to it, whatever it is. So you're right, the behavioral um drivers of risk reward uh do drive incentive and do drive personal responsibility.

Where Growth Looks Most Likely

Book Recommendations

George 32:45

I think we've covered some some interesting ground. I'm not sure we've um I'm not sure we've alighted on the the sort of magic button to fix the UK's growth problem, but uh nonetheless, I think we've we've identified that Southeast Asia is a better growth prospect than even Latin America, even though Latin America may be uh may be looking better than it was. So with that, I think we're as usual, as we always do on these podcasts, I think we'll go into our book of the podcast recommendation. Shall we start with you, Gerald? What are you what are you reading at the moment?

Gerald 33:24

Uh it's it's it's a sort of a favorite book because I've I've read it um a couple of times. It's called Fall, The Mystery of Robert Maxwell, by um investigative journalist John Preston. Um, I am of an age and memory to know all about Maxwell, but it is a fascinating story of how he came from incredibly poor circumstances in 1930s um Czech Republic, effectively, or Czechoslovakia, and how he rose to become a global press baron, and then the sort of tragic end of falling off his own private yacht, or was he pushed, and um all the scandal that then unfolded of uh his finances and uh big gaps in the pension fund and all the rest of it. So it as I say, it's called The Fall, uh The Mystery of Robert Maxwell. It's actually very entertaining. Uh some parts of it made me uh laugh out loud, and other parts I must admit are rather dark, but it is a uh well-worth read.

George 34:33

Uh and Richard, what have you got for us this week this podcast?

Richard 34:37

Well, I'm I'm gonna recommend an old book that I've had knocking around for about 22 years, but continually go back to and dip into, as it's such a great broad reference of so many different overlapping bits and pieces that explain complexity. It's written by a science journalist, Philip Ball, and it's called Critical Mass How One Things Lead to Another. So it's uh not a deep siloed intellectual book that is going to drown you. It's marvelous for dipping into and getting a top-level range um knowledge of so many different things. I've recommended it to my children, I give it out as gifts. It was first published in 2004, and apart from the uh apart predicting the process or the progress of the web, is still as up to date as it ever should be.

Final Thoughts And Goodbye

George 35:31

Excellent. Okay, well, I'm also going to go with quite an old book, and um maybe a little bit more similar to yours, Gerald, and that's Onassis by Frank Brady. I said last time I like to read history books. I also like to read biographies of sort of famous businessmen as well. And Onassis is the latest one that I've been reading. Again, a fascinating story of an entrepreneur uh whose life started quite um quite sort of splendid wealth. He comes from a wealthy family uh living in Turkey, a Greek family living in Turkey. But then the family goes into pretty extreme hardship when when there's the big schism between the Turks and the Greeks in Turkey and and the Greeks get driven out of Turkey. And his the story of his family uh being displaced from from Turkey, having to um become effectively refugees into Greece, and then he goes off funnily enough to Argentina to make his first fortune, which was importing Turkish tobacco into Argentina and making cigarettes, and and then he he gets into oil tankers and um and beautiful women, and uh uh and it's just a great story. It's it's well worth well worth reading. And Onassis actually comes across as quite a likable character. So I think that's um that's summed it up for for this episode, and we'll be back to you with another one later. Thank you. Thank you, George. Thank you.