To give some idea of what was meant by these innocuous-sounding phrases, “reforming” labor market policies meant decreasing minimum wages and ending other regulations that supposedly “distorted” free labor markets. “Reducing government spending” meant reducing anti-poverty programs, among other things. Hence, a series of contradictions appears to pervade the political economy of the World Bank’s new policy regime; one in which paying workers less increases the poverty the bank claims to be ending, and reducing the interventionary power of the state out of a stronger political commitment to privatization means reducing public power in ending poverty (and so on).