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PREFACE: Naomi Klein may be fairly described as The Nation magazine's "anti Milton Friedman," or more simply, a Nation contributor. Here's a thumbnail description of her book, The Shock Doctrine.
"The book argues that the free market policies of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics
have risen to prominence in countries such as Chile under Pinochet,
Russia under Yeltsin, the United States (for example in New Orleans
after Hurricane Katrina), and the privatization of Iraq's economy under
the Coalition Provisional Authority
not because they were democratically popular, but because they were
pushed through while the citizens of these countries were in shock from
disasters or upheavals. It is also claimed that these shocks are in
some cases, such as the Falklands war, created with the intention of being able to push through these unpopular reforms in the wake of the crisis." [Wiki thumbnail]
The National Post's Terence
Corcoran, possibly alert to the left's tactic of accusing others of
what they are themselves doing, or about to do, examines the ominous
portent emanating from the (drum roll) Office of the President Elect & Screen Door Company.
Isn’t this Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine actually being implemented — not by the right but by the left?
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As is now well known, Barack Obama’s new Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, told a Wall Street Journal conference
last week that, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
He
added, his eye on the worsening financial environment, that “This
crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not
do before.” President-elect Obama appears to be taking the crisis
strategy to heart. Announcing his economic team yesterday, Mr. Obama
spoke of an economic crisis of “historic proportions” that requires
immediate response: “If we do not act swiftly and boldly, most experts
believe we could lose millions of jobs next year.” -Terence Corcoran: Now for the real Shock Doctrine
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Oh Goody, are you as excited as I? But wait a minute, says Corcoran.
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In the wildest reaches of her
shock doctrine theories, [Naomi] Klein seemed to be saying that the
capitalists almost deliberately created crises so that they could turn
them into vehicles for market reforms, free trade and privatization.
“The fundamentalist form of capitalism has always needed disasters to
advance.”
But the idea that capitalism creates its own
disasters to advance its cause seems to fall apart in the wake of the
current economic meltdown. The very strategy Ms. Klein pinned on the
late Nobel economist Milton Friedman and capitalism turns out instead
to be the modus operandi of the Obama interventionists. She said of Mr.
Friedman, as the creator of the “disaster capitalism complex,” that his
aim was to overthrow the Keynesian policies and welfare structures that
pushed government deeper and deeper into economic control. “Some people
stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters;
Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas.”
As it turns out, the
Friedmanites warehouse of market ideas — privatization, deregulation,
market forces — currently look to be no match for the massive
underground Doctor No storehouse of liberal, leftist and socialist schemes being hauled to the surface by the Obamaites.
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“This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”
All this sounds like NEW DEAL II.
The irony will come when, after several years of socialist buggery, the
economy is stall tanked, and only a World War pulls us out of financial
depression. My depression, alas, will be magnified 12 fold.
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