The slow agony of the Thatcher age

In the late 70s and early 80s, by the strong pressure from the monetarist counterrevolution in support of financial interests, they started in the United Kingdom and the United States, began budget cuts, privatization of strategic enterprises and deregulation of financial markets.

The virulence of these three policy measures currently it's what has the world on fire. In the U.S. virtually all banks will must be nationalized, as noted in The New York Times, and the last bastions that still resist, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, will also require substantial liquidity support from all taxpayer.

Alan Blinder of Princeton University has identified the six errors that led to the crisis and does not hesitate to qualify as a guilty monetarist counterrevolution advocated by financial deregulation total.

For three decades, the deregulation option was presented as the path to glory in spite of and the most disastrous theories of international trade at the global level, wiping out millions of businesses, causing an enormous concentration of wealth and denying the minimum levels participation.

The neoliberal revolution began in the UK and the U.S. spread around the world and should not miss the speed of the contagion to the current crisis, although some still try to minimize (for the jihad of economic thought as it is a crisis impossible, the market is perfect and it solves everything) has spread worldwide.

A sample of the evolution of this crisis is that the UK economy is about to undergo its most dramatic drop since 1946, with a drastic decrease of 3% this year, slightly less than the fall that are expected for the U.S.: 5.5%, but whose impact is causing massive levels of unemployment. Meanwhile, the pound coin that is not part of the euro area has fallen sharply against the euro and the dollar in recent weeks by growing fears of collapse of the British banking system, which last year had to nationalize Northern Rock and last week he was forced to sign a forced participation of 70% at Royal Bank of Scotland.

The current crisis, indeed, is still in its infancy, and as Vince Cable points out: "Governments are like someone who is trying to give the kiss of life to a corpse". Thus are the things.

Note: This article was published originally in El Blog Salmón, in Spanish. See the original article: La lenta agonía de la era Thatcher