Abstract

The `American model' exposed

This article presents information on the economic developments that are being carried out in the U.S. It is informed that in the G-7 economic summit held in June, 1997, the U.S. administration claimed to have outperformed the other six countries in just about every economic sector. Given Western Europe's high unemployment and Japan's slow recovery from its stock-market collapse that began in 1990, U.S. President, Bill Clinton's pride in the recent U.S. economic growth is understandable. Under the same circumstances, few politicians in any country could have resisted the temptation to preen. But the administration was also making a more ambitious claim: that the faster growth of the U.S. economy reflects the inherent superiority of the neoliberal paradigm. This claim is echoed daily in the mainstream media, in the business press and in other parts of the echo chamber of conventional wisdom.