In that year and a half, many of the country’s business elite had had their fill of the Chicago Boys’ adventures in extreme capitalism. The only people benefiting were foreign companies and a small clique of financiers known as the “piranhas,” who were making a killing on speculation. The nuts-and-bolts manufacturers who had strongly supported the coup were getting wiped out. Orlando Sáenz—the president of the National Association of Manufacturers, who had brought the Chicago Boys into the coup plot in the first place—declared the results of the experiment “one of the greatest failures of our
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