S N E A K P E A K: Chapter 9: Proof of the Global Pudding
"Growing up, I was taught that manners are moral, and that if you couldn’t say anything nice about someone, it was better not to say anything at all. Already I’ve badmouthed the great neoliberal economist, Milton Friedman, as well as the schools of Keynesian, classical, Marxist and mostly male economists.
I have served up a rude cabbage-radicchio soup metaphor to explain EconoMan’s overpriced and overconfident, gassy, lying bubbles of 2008. I’ve protested his toxic global farts, waved away and always blamed on someone else. I’ve insulted both major US political parties, calling them players and jackasses.
I want you to know this goes against my grain and my feminine upbringing. It probably does yours, too. We’ve been taught to be nicer. So I will here resort to a kinder metaphor, another of my mother’s favorite homilies and foods. Whenever she said a sharp, cutting thing, which happened rarely and only with over-ample evidence, her chin would rise, her mouth would tighten, no-nonsense, because there it was, right in front of you: The proof is in the pudding, she’d say.
By now, we’ve had about 40 years of neoliberal free markets in a global economy. I’ve been saying that neoliberal ideas sold by the Washington Consensus have been cruel and damaging—but an economist might answer—So? The real question is have neoliberal free market policies delivered the economic rich dish we were promised?"
