It would be nice if this were the case, but it most certainly is not. First, right wing free-marketers are a small group of ideologues that are treated with bemused contempt by serious students of economic policy. Milton Friedman was a brilliant economist, but he free-market rantings in his later years were simply embarrassing. There is absolutely no future in free-market economics, and it is not taught in any respectable economics department, including the University of Chicago. The modern economy is inevitably, and deeply, government regulated, and the welfare state, which redistributes huge sums from the more to the less well off, is not threatened anywhere. The IMF is indeed practically Neanderthal in its ideology and behavior, but most economists, and indeed whole governments, are hostile to its ambitions.

Ok, this was written in 2008, but there was no lack of examples back then either.

I think he needs to leave his focus on what is taught at respectable economics departments and look at what is practised in the world today.

And while leaving little to work with in his scatching critique of anything but "attempted to compete in the world market place", I think that this view leaves much to be wanted. It is the common focus on economic institutions at te expense of political power relationships and relationships between biotic and economic wealth.

So with this little to go on, I am not impressed.

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