In a recent interview published in Argentinian Spanish-language newspaper Perfil, BESI’s Brian Judge inverts the dominant narrative about the rise of neoliberal economics. Judge argues that rather than a consequence of deregulation, financialization was the mechanism established by neoliberalism. Financialization was useful because it displaced political conflicts that democracy could not resolve into financial markets, he says.
The argument is laid out in detail in Judge’s 2024 monograph, Democracy in Default: Finance and the Rise of Neoliberalism in America. As Judge told Perfil co-founder Jorge Fontevecchia, the term “neoliberal” is often “invoked as a kind of academic insult to refer to things we don’t like,” but Judge aims to “give it a more coherent and systematic foundation.” The interview with Fontevecchia touches on the major case studies covered in the book and places its findings in a Latin America context. Judge also spoke on his research on private credit, the U.S.’s “one-way bet” on AI, and the digital euro, among other topics.