The Encilhamento was an economic bubble that boomed in the late 1880s and early 1890s in Brazil, bursting during the early years of the First Brazilian Republic (1889–1894) and leading to an institutional and a financial crisis. Two Finance Ministers, first the Viscount of Ouro Preto and then Ruy Barbosa, adopted a policy of unrestricted credit for industrial investments, backed by an abundant issuance of money, in order to encourage Brazil's industrialization. This policy of economic incentives created unbridled speculation and increased inflation, and encouraged fraudulent initial public offerings (IPOs) and takeovers. The name The word "encilhamento", literally "saddling-up", the act of girthing or mounting a horse, was a term borrowed from horse racing and used to refer to the speculative practice of seizing get-rich-quick opportunities whenever they unfold, in an analogy based on the popular Brazilian saying "An unmounted saddled horse doesn't appear twice." Background Throughout the 19th century the maturation of technological innovations, especially the development of rail transport, gas lighting and steamships, among others, all linked to the process of industrialization, created opportunities for large speculative movements, leading to an acceleration of the flow of capital in the world. In spite of the considerable volume of native capital being released with the abolition of the slave trade in 1850 – at the same time when the Baron of Mauá was laying the foundations of the modern banking system in Brazil – decades later at beginning of the Republic, the Brazilian economy was still being held back by, amongst other things, restrictive economic legislation – notably the "Land Law" of 1850 and the "Barriers Act" of 1860, which inhibited the access to land ownership by former slaves and immigrants at a time where agriculture was economically predominant in the country, and curbed for decades the development of Brazilian financial markets, with them having become at that time, a kind of "notary oligopoly" under the control of few families. Proposed changes in land legislation were one of the reasons why large landowners and former slaveholders supported the establishment of the republic. In this political, economic and social environment, under the pretext of promoting the industrialization of the country, occurred the Encilhamento. Leading figures Big rentiers: holders of the native "big money", who went after the best rate of return for their capital. In Brazil of the late 19th century, these were predominantly big landowners, former slave traders and owners,