LA Times: Why the right loves a disaster

[El Pinko]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-naomi27jan27,0,3813752.story

Why the right loves a disaster
Ideologues use times of crisis as an opportunity to foist their economic policies on desperate societies.
By Naomi Klein
January 27, 2008
Moody's, the credit-rating agency, claims the key to solving the United States' economic woes is slashing spending on Social Security. The National Assn. of Manufacturers says the fix is for the federal government to adopt the organization's wish-list of new tax cuts. For Investor's Business Daily, it is oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, "perhaps the most important stimulus of all."

But of all the cynical scrambles to package pro-business cash grabs as "economic stimulus," the prize has to go to Lawrence B. Lindsey, formerly President Bush's assistant for economic policy and his advisor during the 2001 recession. Lindsey's plan is to solve a crisis set off by bad lending by extending lots more questionable credit. "One of the easiest things to do would be to allow manufacturers and retailers" -- notably Wal-Mart -- "to open their own financial institutions, through which they could borrow and lend money," he wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal.

Never mind that that an increasing number of Americans are defaulting on their credit card payments, raiding their 401(k) accounts and losing their homes. If Lindsey had his way, Wal-Mart, rather than lose sales, could just loan out money to keep its customers shopping, effectively turning the big-box chain into an old-style company store to which Americans can owe their souls.

If this kind of crisis opportunism feels familiar, it's because it is. Over the last four years, I have been researching a little-explored area of economic history: the way that crises have paved the way for the march of the right-wing economic revolution across the globe. A crisis hits, panic spreads and the ideologues fill the breach, rapidly reengineering societies in the interests of large corporate players. It's a maneuver I call "disaster capitalism."



See more at link...

[tanyev]

1. I just started reading her book The Shock Doctrine, and it's excellent.

It's filling in a lot of gaps I had in my good old 'Murrkan educayshun.

[unpossibles]

2. I thought this may be about their Presidential choices

but I see it goes much deeper than that. Thanks for the link - great article.