Neoliberalism & Neoconservatism, Defined
'Neoliberal' means global 'free' trade without any restrictions, combined with privatization of all government assets and services. It includes luring and trapping poor countries into bank debt that they will never be able to pay back, which in tandem triggers cuts in worker pay and welfare, also known as 'Austerity'.
A key neoliberal tactic is to give huge infrastructure, relief, and/or weapons loans to poor countries from banks like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB/BID), European Central Bank (ECB), US Export-Import Bank (EXIM), and US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). When target nations fail to pay off the loans, banks and financiers swoop in and take the assets of the defaulting nation.
'Neoconservatism' combines neoliberal strategies with aggressive overt or covert military or economic attacks and interventions, on other countries, including war, coups, sanctions, WTO lawsuits, and the deployment of Economic Hitmen to coerce neoliberal dealmaking.
An Economic Hitman's Confession and Call to Action ~ John Perkins
The corporate/bank coopted leadership and institutions of the US Democratic and Republican parties can now be described as both Neoliberal and NeoCon, as can the ‘Labour Party’ and the 'Tories' in the UK, the Social Democratic Party and Christian Democrats (CDU) in Germany, etc.
Neoliberalism, combined with NeoCon intervention, has been the modus operandi of the United States Empire since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, and these US tactics have become markedly more pervasive, organized, powerful and effective since World War II.
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Eric Brooks is a full time grassroots organizer specializing in the interplay of global capitalist economics and US imperial intervention, with energy policy, the climate crisis, and environmental justice.