Let us comment briefly on this. First, it is clear that Washington Consensus policies were widely put in place and just as broadly failed— in their own terms of producing economic growth. Indeed, countries with high sustained growth rates during the 1990s and early 2000s, like China and India, were exactly those not using Washington Consensus policies. Second, realizing this, the international financial institutions (or significant components of them) divided, with the World Bank becoming increasingly insecure and uncertain, while the IMF remained steadfast and indeed declared that neoliberal “reform” had not gone far enough! Third, the “augmented Washington Consensus,” reflecting lessons supposedly learned from the failure of the first generation of reforms, is in fact a grab bag of miscellaneous policies conceived under various political-economic positions within conventional circles, some from the right (“flexible labor markets” means attacking unions) and some from a kind of renewed liberal concern (social safety nets and “targeted poverty reduction”) that to our minds reflects a guilty conscience about the misery inflicted on the world by neoliberal policies—“liberal neoliberalism.” Fourth, the liberal, critical wing of neoliberalism, well represented by Rodrik, stays well within policy conventions. Policy is aimed at producing economic growth, and in low-income economies economic activity is constrained predominantly by lack of investment. Basically just the prescription is to get international financial entities to invest more. The problem with the international part is that Third World countries are expected to return interest to foreign investors on the order of 15–25% a year. Thus, within five years the country receiving foreign investment has more than repaid the loan and is effectively “investing” in the lending country. And fifth, there is no hint of social transformation here, no changing power structures, no mention of reducing social inequalities, just a safe prescription for a mild illness.