Last summer, researchers at the International Monetary Fund settled a long and bitter debate over “neoliberalism”: they admitted it exists. Three senior economists at the IMF, an organisation not known for its incaution, published a paper questioning the benefits of neoliberalism. In so doing, they helped put to rest the idea that the word is nothing more than a political slur, or a term without any analytic power. The paper gently called out a “neoliberal agenda” for pushing deregulation on economies around the world, for forcing open national markets to trade and capital, and for demanding that governments shrink themselves via austerity or privatisation. The authors cited statistical evidence for the spread of neoliberal policies since 1980, and their correlation with anaemic growth, boom-and-bust cycles and inequality….
An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
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Gaping cracks in the dam.
ReplyDeleteShrink government? That's rich hypocrisy since it is government privileges for the banks that are the source neoliberalism's power and the reason so much government is needed in the first place - to ameliorate the injustice thereof!
ReplyDeleteAs for regulating the banks, does it not make sense that government privileges, including implicit ones such as citizens not being allowed fiat checking accounts themselves at the central bank, might be the reason banks need so much regulating in the first place?
ReplyDeleteI've been so wrapped up trying to get Windows 10 to work on my PC for the last few weeks that I missed this. I could have put some good comments underneath.
ReplyDeleteYes, countries are told go bring in austerity policies and to privatise everything, then the mega wealthy can buy up everything. Their families earned their fortunes out of the slave trade and by stealing third world countries resources back in the days of buccaneers and pirates but now they are yet back again able to buy up the world's resources cheaply and borrow money from Western banks at low interest because they can create all the money they want out of nothing (which they call capitalism because they say they came from 'clever and hard working families', not the most brutal and crooked ones - clever crooks don't rob banks, they own them). And they don't need slaves anymore because they can use 'market forces' to force billions of poor people to compete with each other for the scraps that are left keeping wages down at slave rates.
Any third world country that tries to bring in a better system for its people will be called, communists , or dictatorships, when they try to nationalise their country's resources and then the West will come to the rescue guns blazing to fight for freedom and capitalism, except they don't need to do war anymore (phew, which is one good thing) because they can bring in sanctions to cripple a country and destroy its economy instead. Then they can say, 'look at how this mad experiment failed, they have to embrace neoliberal capitalism', then the buccaneers and pirates will come back again.
... there's bread and circuses; then there's Windows 10 .....
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