However, as the social power evidenced in the bailout of Wall Street demonstrated, neo-liberal dogma is never forced on those with the power to resist it. Several decades of neo-liberal policies were implemented by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) on the citizens of nations too politically powerless to resist them. Closing corrupt, extractive banks was one of the absolute musts of IMF (neo-liberal) policy because they misallocate resources across entire economies if left intact. The point here is that neo-liberalism is purported by its proponents to create / produce an economic infrastructure conducive to ‘free markets’ but existing asymmetry in political-economic power assures it is only used to restructure the economic relations of those too powerless to resist it. The increasing crises of capitalism, and that of 2008 in particular, should have put an end to neo-liberalism—in the depths of the crisis even the IMF offered a mea culpa apologizing for decades of inflicting its policies on ‘other countries’ that ‘the West’ wouldn’t inflict on itself. The difference in treatment—in terms of both the hypocrisy of differentiated treatment and the theoretical incoherence of acting against principles in the face of the power to resist them, illustrated neo-liberalism to be a pernicious form of neo-imperialism hiding behind bogus economic theories. And in fact, the major points of disagreement amongst Western economists have been over responses to the crisis, not its causes. (To his credit Paul Krugman has taken the ‘the GSEs caused the crisis’ argument to task quite effectively several times). The tendency of we in ‘the West’ has been to draw a circle around the visible political-economic relations—those close at hand, and to exclude from our realm of concern the broader impact of Western policies. However, neo-liberalism as both ideology and imposed political economy is now fact in the West. With quiet acceptance any pretense of ‘democracy’ has been replaced with the admonition that if we behave ourselves we can remain on the ‘winning’ side of political economic restructuring according to neo-liberal dogma. Left unsaid is that rapidly declining circumstance, in terms of both the increasing economic marginalization of most citizens and the imposition of the technologies of totalitarianism, is wholly the product of four decades of near-silent neo-liberal coup. What Mr. Obama’s insistence on continuing to push neo-liberal policies indicates is that no economic debacle will cause neo-liberalism to be re-thought by its proponents. What historical trajectory suggests is that the imposed political economies and failed policies of neo-liberalism will only result in their greater imposition until the world says ‘no more.’