As Rodrik demonstrates, a decade into these adjustments the majority of “adjusted” countries had not yet returned to where they started from in terms of lost GDP—lost through the implementation of these policies. Successes were few, far between, and subject to frequent reversals. Latin America’s economic record was actually much better during the 2000s, a period when the pace of reforms slowed down considerably, and in some countries halted or was even reversed. As a recent survey of the results of IMF and World Bank reforms in Latin America shows, after the crises of the 1990s, the region’s reform index was basically flat in the 2000s. What seemed to be generated instead of growth were large financial crises, as capital accounts were opened up and controls on inflows were abolished—a uniquely IMF addition to the Washington Consensus checklist—and banking systems were liberalized. For Latin America in particular, the 1990s compounded the losses of the debt crisis decade of the 1980s. Far from creating growth, these policies shrank the economies that pursued them, just as we see happening in Europe today. … In fact, it’s hardly a stretch to see EU policy in the European periphery as little more than a localized set of structural adjustment policies implemented with just as much success as one would expect given past results.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 440