The sages of the pampas

摘要

Economics is not a profession for the publicity-hungry-except in Argentina. Consider Tomas Bulat, who holds three degrees in the subject, hosts a weekly television show about it and has written two best-selling books on it. He boasts over 179,000 followers on Twitter. In comparison, Ricardo Darin, arguably Argentina's most famous actor, has only 41,000; Andres Calamaro, a well-known rock star, has 34,000. Ata recent lunch in the seaside city of Mar del Plata, your correspondent was intrigued to see waiters and diners fawn over Mr Bulat. A neighbouring table invited him to share their calamari and a particularly bold waitress hugged him and took his photograph to show her friends.