Eye of the Hurricane:
Milton Friedman and the Global South

Professor Walden Bello
Focus of on the Global South, 25 November 2006

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In this brief review of the impact of Milton Friedman's fundamentalist free-market creed, Walden Bello charts its lasting consequences in the global south in the form of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and its successor - Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs).

In particular Bello draws attention to Friedman's assertion about political freedom going hand-in-hand with free-markets. Bello points to the example of Chile (1973 - 1990) in which a free-market paradise was imposed through one of Latin America's most bloodstained military dictatorships. The irony of this ushering in of the guru's fundamentalist free-market ideas could not have escaped the aloof University of Chicago professor's attention.

Walden Bello is professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines and executive director of the Bangkok-based institute - Focus on the Global South. Focus on the Global South http://www.focusweb.org