Neoliberalism

Ecuador In Crisis: A Country Broken By Neoliberalism

January 11, 2024 Gerardo Szalkowicz, People's Dispatch. Educate! Ecuador, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Narcotrafficking, Neoliberalism, Violence

People across the world were shocked to see a drug gang waving rifles and grenades in the TC Television studios in Guayaquil, and the scene was perhaps the cinematic peak of successive days of explosions, riots, lootings, shootings, car explosions, and widespread panic that has paralyzed the country. However, the shocking and unprecedented episode on the public channel in Guayaquil—and the events that preceded and followed it—are just the latest chapter in a spiral of organized violence that has lasted for about five years and that has metastasized in the last two. It is the sad metamorphosis of a country that went from being the second safest in Latin America to becoming the most violent, with a homicide rate that has grown almost 800% since 2019.

Argentina’s Largest Trade Union Announces General Strike

January 1, 2024 Orinoco Tribune. Resist! Argentina, General Strike, Javier Milei, Labor, Neoliberalism, Worker Rights and Jobs

The General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Argentina’s largest labor union, has called for a general strike and a march to the Congress on January 24, 2024 to protest against President Javier Milei’s Decree of Necessity and Urgency and the “Omnibus Bill” that grants absolute powers to the far-right president to govern for two years bypassing the Congress. On Thursday, December 28, the CGT, which is the common platform for the largest labor unions of Argentina, announced the general strike against Milei’s neoliberal policies which “intend to drown the country in economic and political instability.”

Year 2023 In Review For Latin American And The Caribbean

December 18, 2023 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. Educate! Caribbean, Fascism, Latin America, Monroe Doctrine, Neoliberalism, Pink Tide, Rightwing Politics, US Sanctions

December 2 marked the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, which proclaimed US dominion over Latin America and the Caribbean. Left-leaning governments in the hemisphere have had to contest a decadent but still dominant USA. Challenges in the past year include a world economic slowdown, a continuing drug plague, and a more aggressive hegemon reacting to a more volatile and disputed world order. The progressive regional current, the so-called Pink Tide, slackened in 2023 compared to the rising tide of 2022, which had been buoyed by big wins in Colombia and Brazil.

Is Neoliberalism Really Dead?

December 17, 2023 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Anti-capitalism, Financial Crisis, Media, Neoliberalism

t's happening again. Reports of the death of neoliberalism are once again proliferating. Just take a look at the UK Guardian. In the UK Guardian website, there is a whole series of stories whether it is "Neoliberalism is Dying," "The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism," "Biden Just Declared the Death of Neoliberalism," "Is Neoliberalism Finally Over?," "Is Neoliberalism Finally Dead?" and "Is the Neoliberal Era Over Yet?" And of course there are also contrary views: "The National Institutes of Health Say Neoliberalism is Not Dead." And there is also a very interesting story in The Jacobin, which says "The Rumors are False: Neoliberalism is Alive and Well." Well, this is not the first time that the death of neoliberalism has been announced.

Argentina: The Milei Moment Has Arrived

December 16, 2023 Luis Alberto Quevedo, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Argentina, Austerity, Elections, Javier Milei, Neoliberalism, Rightwing Politics, State Repression

Yesterday, Javier Milei’s intense life as a panelist came to an end and his new life as president of the nation begins. Now his words and diagnoses will have to become government actions. For this reason, his first speech in front of the Legislative Assembly, at the very moment this mutation was taking place, aroused so much interest. The first surprise was that he did not address the deputies and senators who were constituted as representatives of the people: the two assembled chambers embody the always heterogeneous preferences of our society. Milei preferred instead the esplanade and to speak to his followers, not to the people as a whole but to his own close followers.

Finance Minister: How US Sanctions Impact Nicaragua’s Poor

December 11, 2023 John Perry, CovertAction Magazine. Educate! Migration, Neoliberalism, Nicaragua, Poverty, Sanctions

Despite the enormous damage caused by U.S. intervention, Nicaragua’s economy has improved dramatically under the rule of Daniel Ortega, a leader of Nicaragua’s 1979 socialist Sandinista revolution who has been in power since 2007. Nicaraguan Finance Minister Iván Acosta gave an interview detailing how Nicaragua fits the broader pattern by which sanctions negatively impact working class people and the poor while doing little to affect a change in government policy. U.S. sanctions have been applied against Nicaragua based on the false claim that Ortega committed grave human rights abuses, when his government largely reacted with restraint to the violent political uprising in 2018 which caused Nicaragua’s GDP to decline by over 4%.

The Rise Of The Far Right Is A Global Phenomenon

November 24, 2023 Alberto Toscano, In These Times. Strategize! Argentina, Elections, Far Right Politics, Neoliberalism

Across the globe, the far Right appears to be on the ascent. It has seized commanding heights in Giorgia Meloni’s Italy and Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, while formerly ostracized ethno-nationalist parties like the Sweden Democrats and the True Finns are now in governing coalitions. Shortly after this issue went to press, Argentina elected as president the voluble anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei, whose promise to commodify all facets of social life is accompanied by rabid anti-feminism and culture war invectives — “In my government there will be no cultural Marxism. I won’t apologize for having a penis. I shouldn’t feel guilty for being a white, blond, blue-eyed man.”

Far-Right Libertarian Javier Milei Is The Next President Of Argentina

November 20, 2023 People's Dispatch. Educate! Argentina, Elections, Far Right Politics, Neoliberalism

Javier Milei, the candidate of the Liberty Advances far-right libertarian party, was victorious in the second round presidential elections in Argentina held on November 19. With 99.3% of the votes counted, Milei had scored 55.7% of the vote, while his opponent, center-left peronist Sergio Massa of the Union for the Homeland coalition, trailed behind with 44.3%. Milei will take office as president on December 10. In his victory speech, Milei told supporters, “The situation in Argentina is critical. There is no space for gradualisms nor for lukewarmness or ambiguities…If we don’t advance rapidly with the structural changes that Argentina needs, we will face the worst crisis in our history.”

Intimate Embrace Between Liberalism And The Far Right

November 18, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Far Right, Latin America, Liberalism, Neoliberalism

One of the curiosities of our time is that the far right is quite comfortable with the established institutions of liberal democracy. There are instances here and there of disgruntled political leaders who refuse to accept their defeat at the ballot box (such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro) and then call upon their supporters to take extra-parliamentary action (as on 6 January 2021 in the United States and, in a farcical repetition, on 8 January 2023 in Brazil). But, by and large, the far right knows that it can attain what it wants through the institutions of liberal democracy, which are not hostile to its programmes.

How The International Monetary Fund Continues To Shrink Poorer Nations

October 27, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Debt, International Monetary Fund, Neoliberalism, Poverty, Privatization

From 9 to 15 October, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held their annual joint meeting in Marrakech (Morocco). The last time that these two Bretton Woods institutions met on African soil was in 1973, when the IMF-World Bank meeting was held in Nairobi (Kenya). Kenya’s then President Jomo Kenyatta (1897–1978) urged those gathered to find ‘an early cure to the monetary sickness of inflation and instability that has afflicted the world’. Kenyatta, who became Kenya’s first president in 1964, noted that, ‘[o]ver the last fifteen years, many developing countries have been losing, every year, a significant proportion of their annual income through deterioration of their terms of trade’.

China, Russia, Israel, India, And The Difficult Birth Of A New World

October 23, 2023 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report China, India, Israel, Multipolarity, Neoliberalism, Russia, US Imperialism

What we are going to talk about today is really nothing more or less than the story of the birthing of a new order that we have, in any case, been talking about and to which President Putin, in his traditional speech to Valdai at the Valdai Club, alluded and which, by the way, the Valdai Club Annual Report also detailed, I thought, very ably. It’s really, the report is worth a read. So please take a look at both documents. But really, as I say, we are talking about the birthing of a new order, the topic of, and this is the topic of discussion not only at Valdai, not only in Sochi, but in China as well, and really practically all over the world. And of course, there’s an enormous amount of hope invested in this.

Ecuador’s Election Could Have Lasting Consequences

October 16, 2023 Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research. Educate! Ecuador, Elections, Neoliberalism, Rafael Correa

Imagine a developing country where a 43-year-old economist with a PhD from the University of Illinois, who is relatively unknown as a politician, runs for president and wins. Despite the preceding decades of corruption and institutional rot, he puts together a competent government and gets the economic policy right. The numbers tell much of the story: in the 10 years of his presidency, poverty fell by 41 percent; income per person grew at more than twice the rate of the previous 25 years; and public investment and government expenditure on health services doubled as a share of the economy.

Chile 50 Years: US Scars From 9/11/73

September 12, 2023 Brad Evans, Consortium News. Educate! Chile, coup, Neoliberalism, US Imperialism

For the few remaining women of Calama in Chile’s Atacama desert, September 11 holds a terrifying meaning. They understand the pain of watching forensic investigators meticulously scour through particles of dust, seeking to retrieve the tiniest fragments of lives brutally taken from the world. They know what it means to face devastating absence, knowing the bodies of loved ones will never be returned. But their loss has nothing to do with the attack on New York’s twin towers. Fifty years ago, in the early morning of Sept. 11 1973, a U.S.-backed coup led by General Augusto Pinochet began with Chile’s military taking control of strategic locations in the capital city Santiago, including the main radio and television networks.

Congressman Jamaal Bowman And Black Misleadership

September 8, 2023 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Black misleadership, Democrats, Neoliberalism

Everyone knows what it means to mislead. The simplicity of the word gives it a lot of power. Black elected officials are beholden to the Democratic Party and their corporate, neo-liberal and imperialist interests. Working in concert with them is by definition working against the interests of Black people. Of course the misleaders can’t be obvious about their subterfuge. They have to at least go through the motions of opposing the Republican Party, the white people’s party, and anyone who is seen as a prominent representative of that group. Performance is the order of the day, while any concrete actions made on behalf of Black people are few and far between.

To Win The Run-Off Election, Ecuador’s Left Must Confront Past Mistakes

September 2, 2023 Peter Bolton, Orinoco Tribune. Strategize! Ecuador, Elections, Left Politics, Neoliberalism

On August 20, Ecuadorians went to the polls to elect a new president just over two years since the previous presidential elections of 2021. Luisa González of the Citizens’ Revolution party topped the poll with 33%. But since no candidate achieved the necessary threshold to win in the first round, the election will now be decided via a run-off election in October. She will face political newcomer Daniel Noboa of the center-right National Democratic Action Party, who surprised political observers by placing second in a crowded field with 24% of votes counted. González’s party was founded by former firebrand socialist president Rafael Correa after his original party, Country Alliance, became sullied by his successor Lenin Moreno.

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