Yet, whether circumspect or perfervid, each crisis diagnostic held fast to the syllogism that people can learn from their mistakes; the deep contraction and financial breakdown stands as irrefutable evidence that neoliberalism is false; and therefore, neoliberalism must be on its last legs. That credo was the fuel of the machine that churned out reams of crisis commentary from 2008–10; it put the hi-fi in early litanies of financial reform. One encounters this admonitory approach to the death of neoliberalism in the most diverse accounts of the crisis.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 93