Some three decades ago, Ronald Reagan set a new tone in economic and political life. Responding to a series of domestic and international crises in the 1970s, he famously joked that ‘the ten most feared words in the English language’ were: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.’ Reagan and allies (including Margaret Thatcher) set in motion a pendulum swing in both economic theory and government policy. They overturned the reign of post-war Keynesian doctrine and invoked a free market anti-statist ideology and monetarist economic theory, establishing a new era in the global economy, including ‘neoliberal economic globalization’, ‘financial deregulation’, and ‘market fundamentalism’. This was backed by seductive promises of prosperity for all, including the ‘developing countries’ under the emergent ‘Washington Consensus’, which paradoxically is now largely associated with a period of unsuccessful or damaging policies imposed by the club of rich countries upon the poorest people in the world. Purist Monetarism too came under criticism in the 1990s, and was in part modified by a pragmatic hybrid of more flexible monetary and fiscal policy, while retaining (and strengthening) both the fixation on low inflation and the ‘faith’ in unfettered free markets.