massive crowds gathering in the plaza de majio, the fabled square where juan peron and eva gave the rabble-rousing speeches. the looks on the people, the bitterness and the despair was really quite -- quite an impression. so, you know, also while i was there talked to some of the people who had been in the government when i had, you know, a few moments away from my daily reporting duties to talk to them about what had gone wrong. what was the key turning points and what was it like. their memories were fresh and i thought this is really dramatic. well, this is even more dramatic than the book -- some of the stories in the book i just wrote about the asian financial crisis and the book that was referred to. there was this also overarching theme of this country that had been such a success story in the 1990s, you know, it was the darling of the imf and, yes, the world bank and the markets and washington in general. and, you know, it had enjoyed this terrific growth. and finally seemed to be sort of putting its history of stagnation and hyper inflation behind it. it had a convertibility system, a 1 d