Sara’s Reviews > Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader > Status Update

"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

"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!