ABSTRACT
Neoliberal institutions and ideologues have spent the last twenty-eight years restructuring local, provincial, national, regional, and global economies. Among developed nations, the process focused on dismantling legal and regulatory systems that developed from national policies rooted in Keynesian economics and the worldwide depression of the 1930s. Such policies recognized that governments and publics shared an interest in economic stability. In contrast, neoliberals championed a belief in autonomous, free markets. In this vision, the structure of free markets gave them an infallible ability to decide what was best. Within such markets, firms would always be innovative, prudent, honest, and focused on serving customers. Infallible markets, filled with corporate models of probity, needed no governmental oversight. For neoliberals, that justified deregulating Keynesian markets and privatizating government functions. From 1980 until 2008, neoliberal beliefs circulated as commonsense across corporate media regardless of an outlet’s branding as liberal or conservative. Achieving status as commonsense, neoliberalism became the dominant ideology in most developed nations.
