Is Neoliberalism in crisis today - Essay Example

We find ourselves overwhelmed with grand arguments by finest economists and other intellectuals that the form of global economy that is surfacing nowadays is not only the most modern experiment in economic structure, it is, definitely, the most promising economic organisation. Global neoliberalism, the ‘extension of market-based economic integration across all local, regional and national borders’ (United Nations Environment Programme 2002: 330), will furnish humanity with the best possible means to attain eternal prosperity.

Through the success of the global capitalist market economy and the resulting downfall of all structures of state planning such as communism and socialism, economic history as the competition among various economic structures will eventually end (Rapley 2004). But now neoliberalism is in crisis. This prominent form of economic organisation is now old and questionable. The flow of politics across the Third World countries or the developing world is not in favour of the traditional rules of free capital flows, deregulation, and belt-tightening.

It is relatively probable the markets will reach an equilibrium, or even rally a little, but a number of major theories are up for re-evaluation (Harvey 2007). The objective of this paper is to review and discuss the so-called ‘crisis’ faced by neoliberalism today. Alternative economic structures or solutions to global neoliberalism will also be discussed. Economists might be excused for asking whether the financial crisis that hit the Asian region, which transpired in 1997 and has subsequently, expanded beyond the region, has troubled the certainty of the supporters of global neoliberalism (Berger 2003).

Specifically, the Asian crisis is one of the most evident manifestations of the problems that neoliberal economic structure now faces. However, advocates of the neoclassical or neoliberal economic theory refuse to give up