The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

by Naomi Klein

It was in this context that the U.S. secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, visited Thailand in March 1999 and saw fit to scold the Thai public for turning to prostitution and the “dead end of drugs.” It is “essential that girls not be exploited and abused and exposed to AIDS. It’s very important to fight back,” Albright said, filled with moral resolve. She apparently saw no connection between the fact that so many Thai girls were being forced into the sex trade and the austerity policies for which she expressed her “strong support” on the same trip. It was the Asian financial crisis’s equivalent of Milton Friedman expressing his displeasure with Pinochet’s or Deng Xiaoping’s human rights violations while praising their bold embrace of economic shock therapy.