The Quiet Coup Neoliberalism and the Looting of America

From the author of The Color of Money, a powerful and disturbing account of how free-market ideologues rigged American law to benefit the rich



Many Americans believe that something fundamental has gone wrong in their country. Why does full-time work no longer guarantee financial stability? Why does college cost a lifetime of debt? And why have decades of free-market promises yielded not more freedom and liberty but more debt and constraints? In The Quiet Coup, Mehrsa Baradaran, a premier public intellectual, argues that America's problems stem from the market-centred doctrine of neoliberalism. Far more than a mere economic theory, neoliberalism and its adherents transformed American law—yielding not fewer laws but more-complex laws and regulations that benefit the wealthy. From neoliberalism’s role as a tool of ideological warfare against racial justice movements in the 1960s to its complete institutional takeover in the 1980s to the crypto meltdowns of the 2020s, Baradaran’s essential chronicle shows that the neoliberal era—and legalised mass looting—is far from over and in fact is only accelerating.