So SAPs introduced a three-part cocktail: austerity, privatisation and liberalisation. These principles were applied across the board, not just in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and India – the first victims of structural adjustment – but in every country that was placed under the control of the IMF, regardless of their local economic conditions or the particular needs of their people. It was a one-size-fitsall blueprint, handed down from above by Washington-based technocrats – the central planners of an emerging global economic order that claimed, ironically, to detest central planning.
