Status Updates From Neoliberalism: A Critical R...

"The ‘Constitution’ actually aims at making neoliberalism ‘irreversible’ in the enlarged EU. The ‘Constitution’ ascribes the character of ‘constitutional order’ to two major pillars of neoliberalism. First, deregulated markets. Article I-3 says that ‘The Union’s objectives: a single market where competition is free and undistorted’'" - but this kind of competition requires massive regulation. EU lives off regulation.

"As the two major EU economies involuntarily violated the SGP rules, the Commission declared, in March 2003, that the Iraq war provided an exception to EU deficit rules." - EU bores you to death, to the point that you miss the funny parts.

"By identifying it with European unification, the leading political and economic forces in Europe present neoliberalism as a taboo that cannot be violated."- how sad, how true.

"This persistence of neoliberal policies and ideas has been achieved through policies officially aiming at the promotion of economic, monetary and political unity among EU member states."- this beacuse the EU was based on such inspiring ideals of peace, which were fulfilled, that critizing the euro sounds like turning against peace (peace shuold not be given for granted)

"Official statistics give the following data for the increase in the profit share between 1981 and 2003 (...): Italy: from 23.3 per cent to 32.3 per cent; Germany: from 26.9 per cent to 33.6 per cent; France: from 20.6 per cent to 30.7 per cent; Spain: from 25.4 per cent, to 34.5 per cent, and the United Kingdom: from 25.6 per cent to 26.5 per cent." - Italy -with all the taxes - worse than the UK

"Instead of production, sales and growth, with its implied stability, neoliberal thought sees the key to enterprise profits as cutting costs".

"Despite ongoing efforts throughout the 1970s to support the dollar, Saudi Arabia now began to sell its dollar reserves, and in addition threatened an oil-price increase if the United States did not act to stop the fall. Most important, a massive flight from the dollar began in the now huge and essentially unrestricted private capital market".

"The Euromarket pro- vided a largely unregulated arena for international capital transactions as desired by financial capital (and hence supported by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve), but at the same time it left capital controls in place in Europe "

"Given that finance capital was roughly 15 per cent of total capital in the United States before neolib- eralism (and grew to roughly 25 per cent under neoliberalism), how could this minority impose its will on the majority of capital?"

"Neoliberalism is an organisation of capitalism"

"‘Iterated prisoner dilemma’ interactions, in this view, produce social capital, taking place between abstract and equal individuals. Neoliberal policy interven- tions are structured around depoliticised collectivities such as ‘stakeholders’ and ‘user groups’ as key agents of producing social capital" - wow, denouement of my turf!

"Neoliberal advocacy of good governance, which redefines the state and its role, creates an added space for civil society. The ideal state now is decentralised and participatory. It streamlines its bureaucracy, undertakes new public management reforms, and becomes more accountable and transparent. "

"From the early 1990s, neoliberals expanded their notion of civil society to include the concept of ‘social capital’. Referring to trust, norms, reciprocity and social networks, they advanced social capital as crucial for solving collective problems, and for creating civil society, democracy and development."

"A student–teacher learning relationship is potentially replaced by a consumer–producer relationship."

"the social-policy analyst’s classical concern with social needs and social citizenship rights should become the quest for supranational citizenship and for justice between states"

"The reformed neoliberal approach recognises the inadequacy of the old textbook equity–efficiency trade-off. However, the new equity–efficiency harmony is just as simplistic" - Keynesian economics, with its assumption of a fair market compensation of labour input, leaned in this simplistic direction

"Land reform has been a cornerstone in the marriage between neoliberal and neo-populist ideas on agriculture, both embedded in the tradition favouring small peasant farming"

"USAID and the broader donor community used NGOs as partners in the shared development enterprise. In this they helped turn local communities away from revolution and to promote a reformist approach to change"

"In particular, financial inflation, and any investment boom arising out of it, increased prodigiously the demand for imports into an emerging market country. Higher imports then increased further the amount of capital inflow that was needed to keep the exchange rate stable." - this is exactly what happened in the US too, because high foreign debt always matches balance-of-payment deficits, and the other way round

"The IMF, which had been marginalised during the 1970s by the collapse of fixed exchange rates and the ease with which governments could borrow from the Euromarkets, now came into its own again. Its new function was to rehabilitate the predominantly American international banking system by refinancing the debts of governments that had borrowed from it (Strange 1986)"