is the naomi klein books examined the roots of what is happening now?”
Naomi Klein’s books, No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, examined the roots of what is happening now. In The Shock Doctrine, she quotes Larry Summers, from back in 1991 when he was a honcho at the World Bank. He was talking about the World Bank policies that used to be called The Washington Consensus. And he said, “Spread the truth — the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.” It was all about deregulation, privatization, the market is always best, the market’s always supreme. And there was the feeling of certainty — that we had figured everything out. Summers even said a couple of years later that there are many basic economic ideas that are “passé” — no longer worthy of debate. One of the issues that he listed as over was the idea that government could invest in programs to stimulate the economy.
Editor’s Note: Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of the international bestsellers The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. She writes a regular column for The Nation magazine and The Guardian newspaper that is syndicated internationally by The New York Times Syndicate. Her articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. She wrote and co-produced “The Take,” an award-winning feature documentary about Argentina’s occupied factory movement.
