Thaksin turned out to be an inventive and popular campaigner with new ideas; in the elections in 2001, his party won more seats in parliament than any party had ever won in a Thai election. He became prime minister, and he immediately began to fulfill his campaign promises. His underlying idea, inspired by the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, who came to Thailand for a visit, was to increase the number and kinds of assets that could be used in the countryside as collateral for low-interest loans. “Capitalism needs capital, without which there is no capitalism,” Thaksin said in a speech in 2003. “We need to push capital into the rural areas.” He created a stimulus program that included microcredits to farmers, cash infusions to Thai villages, low-interest education loans, and a new national medical plan by which anybody could get treatment for a flat fee of 30 Thai baht, about one American dollar.