The Wall Street Consensus

Abstract

For more than three decades, Washington Consensus policies have been employed in Latin America. Using the shock tactics of disaster capitalism, and under the justification of austerity based neoliberal economic theory, the region has witnessed massive transfers of wealth from the vast majority of society to a small financial rentier elite. This article analyzes how the government and the largest banks of the United States, the intellectual authors of the Washington Consensus, are now recurring to the same tactics in the United States. Once again, the financial crisis is being used to consecrate a massive transfer of wealth and economic power from all workers to a very small, but extremely powerful financial elite.