Disaster economics US economic theory Shock doctrine Ireland

Sceala Clann T.D. Location: Derry roots

What is happening to the economy Ireland is not unique. The shock and awe economic politics is anglo US policy.

Republican or Democrat. Reagan or Clinton. Different clothes for the same policy hoping for the same results. The access and Control of resources to exploit for financial gain.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a 2007 book by Canadian author Naomi Klein, and is the basis of a 2009 documentary by the same name.
The book argues that the free market policies of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman have risen to prominence in some countries because they were pushed through while the citizens were reacting to disasters or upheavals. It is implied that some man-made crises, such as the Falklands war, may have been created with the intention of being able to push through these unpopular reforms in their wake.
The book has an introduction, a main body and a conclusion, divided into seven parts with a total of 21 chapters.
The introduction sketches the history of the last thirty years where economic shock doctrine has been applied throughout the world, from South America in the 1970s to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Klein introduces two of her main themes.

That practitioners of the shock doctrine tend to seek a blank slate on which to create their ideal free market economies, which inevitably requires a usually violent destruction of the existing economic order.
The similarities between economic shock doctrine and the original shock therapy – a psychiatric technique where electric shocks were applied to mentally ill patients.

Disaster economics is US economic theory. Shock doctrine is happening now in Ireland

The Shock Doctrine Book
Part 1 begins with a chapter on psychiatric shock therapy and the covert experiments conducted by the psychiatrist Ewen Cameron in collusion with the Central Intelligence Agency: how it was partially successful in distorting and regressing patients' original personality, but ineffectual in developing a better personality to replace it. Parallels with economic shock therapy are made, including a digression on how government agencies harnessed some of the lessons learned to create more effective torture techniques. Torture, according to Klein, has often been an essential tool for authorities who have implemented aggressive free market reforms – this assertion is stressed throughout the book. She suggests that for historical reasons the human rights movement has often portrayed torture without explaining its context, which has made it frequently appear as pointless sadism. The second chapter introduces Milton Friedman and his Chicago school of economics, who Klein describes as leading a movement committed to free markets even less regulated than before the Great Depression.

Part 2 discusses the use of shock doctrine to transform South American economies in the 1970s, focusing on the coup in Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet. The apparent necessity for the unpopular policies associated with shock therapy to be supported by torture is explored.

Part 3 covers attempts to apply the shock doctrine without the need for extreme violence against sections of the population. The mild shock therapy of Margaret Thatcher is explained as being made possible by the Falklands War, while free-market reform in Bolivia was possible due to a combination of pre-existing economic crises and the charisma of Jeffrey Sachs.

Part 4 reports on how the shock doctrine was applied in Poland, Russia, South Africa and to the tiger economies during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Part 5 introduces the Disaster Capitalism Complex where the author describes how companies have learnt to profit from disasters. She talks about how the same personnel move easily from security-related posts in US government agencies to lucrative positions in corporations.

Part 6 discusses the occupation of Iraq, which Klein describes as the most comprehensive and full-scale implementation of the shock doctrine ever attempted.

Part 7 is about the winners and losers of economic shock therapy, how narrow groups will often do very well by moving into luxurious gated communities while large sections of the population are left with decaying public infrastructure, declining incomes and increased unemployment.

Conclusion is about the backlash against the shock doctrine and economic institutions that propagate it like the World Bank and IMF. South America and Lebanon post-2006 are examined as sources of positive news, where politicians are already rolling back free-market policies, with some mention of the increased campaigning by community-minded activists in South Africa and China.

Praise
Nobel Laureate and former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz wrote a review of The Shock Doctrine for the New York Times, calling the parallel between economic shock therapy and the psychological experiments conducted by Ewen Cameron "overdramatic and unconvincing" but also saying, "the case against these policies is even stronger than the one Klein makes" and that the book contains "a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries." Paul B. Farrell from the Dow Jones Business News stated "you must read what may be the most important book on economics in the 21st century". John Gray wrote in The Guardian, "There are very few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books." William S. Kowinski of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Klein may well have revealed the master narrative of our time," and it was named one of the best books of 2007 by the Village Voice, Publishers Weekly, The Observer, and the Seattle Times. The Irish Times describes Klein’s arguments as "compelling" with Dr. Tom Clonan reporting that she "systematically and calmly demonstrates to the reader" the way in which neocons were intimately linked to seismic events that "resulted in the loss of millions of lives". Near the end of the review Dr. Clonan’s offers a précis for Klein’s central argument—that the neoconservative project is not about "implanting of democracy" but a repressive prescription for the maximising of global profit for a small elite. "Neocons see the ideal ratio of super-rich to permanent-poor as consistent with an uber-class of business oligarchs and their political cronies from the top 20%". The remaining 80% of the world’s population, the "disposable poor", would subsist in "planned misery" unable to afford adequate housing, privatised education or healthcare.[10] The Independent called the book "a compelling account of the way big business and politics use global disasters for their own ends", while Stephen Amidon of the New York Observer calls it a "compelling study of the dark heart of contemporary capitalism."
Winner of the Warwick Prize for Writing (2008/9)
Read More ... The Shock Doctrine Book

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Disaster economics US economic theory Shock doctrine Ireland