When Winston Fritsch was doing his PhD at Cambridge, England, in the 1970s, Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso was a visiting professor. Cardoso was in exile from Brazil's military rulers at the time. The two men became friends and kept in touch over the years.
A decade-and-a-half later in 1993, Fritsch was sitting at his home near Rio de Janeiro one Saturday when the phone rang. It was Cardoso who had just been made finance minister and wanted to put together an economics team and a stabilization plan. The next day Fritsch, who acted as economic policy secretary, was in Brasilia together with another team member, Gustavo Franco, the current central bank governor. Fritsch, a former academic at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio, had earlier in his career supervised Franco's master's thesis.
Such close contacts between the key players meant they were united in their task: the creation of the Real Plan of 1994 which has finally licked Brazil's hyperinflation after numerous failed attempts. It's the great success story of Brazil in the 1990s from which everything else - economic growth, foreign investment, stability - has emanated.