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pushed many economies towards crisis. A deregulated banking sector had
acted too much outside the boundaries of safe and trustworthy operations,
resulting in a collapse of confidence in economic institutions not seen
since the 1930s. Economic breakdowns and crises in many countries
generated dramatic social and economic problems, adding in some cases to
existing poverty, hunger and inequality. A brute reminder of the fact that
behind the notion of free-markets there is also an uneven geography on a
global level:
One of the tenets of neo-liberalism is that poor countries should
concentrate on producing a few special goods for export in order to
obtain foreign exchange, and should import most other commodities
(Capra 2002, p. 128).
Image 4.3: Free trade. 31
In the aftermath of the real estate, banking and financial crisis in
2008, which very much started in the United States, the ideology of neoliberalism
has been hotly debated and questioned, as those living in a
country like Iceland know all too well. Some commentators drew the
conclusion that the confidence in “self-regulating markets” had evaporated
and that new regulations by the state were necessary and inevitable:
In the wake of the crisis in financial markets of 2008, the state has
made something of a comeback. The period of freewheeling
deregulation is over (Giddens 2009, p. 15).
Yet, although all states have been drawn into the orbit of providing
means of financial restructuring, there is still little evidence that the slogan
“Neoliberalism – so long, we hardly knew ya’“ (Keil 2009, p. 231) is true.
Maybe some of the doors into “freewheeling” have been closed, but it
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http://urbanhabitat.org/files/images/14-1_Page_08_Image_0001_color.jpg (retrieved 2009-09-13)
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