A number of people have claimed that the ongoing financial crisis has revealed the problems with neoliberal thought and neoliberal policies in the ’Atlantic Heartland’. However, if
we look at the history of the ’Heartland’ economies then it becomes evident that they were never neoliberal in the first place - that is, the economic policies and discourses in these countries
did not follow neoliberal prescriptions. /We Have Never Been Neoliberal/ explores this divergence between neoliberal theory and ’neoliberal’ practice by focusing on the underlying
contradictions in monetarism, private monopolies, and financialization. The book finishes by proposing a ’manifesto for a doomed youth’ in which it argues that younger generations should refuse
to pay interest on anything in order to avoid the trap of debt-driven living.
