To facilitate mass production in a transnational setting, neoliberals actually concocted a “mother of all think tanks” to seed their spawn across the globe. The Atlas Economic Research Foundation was founded in 1981 by Antony Fisher to assist other MPS-related groups in establishing neoliberal think tanks in their own geographic locations. It claims to have had a role in founding a third of all world “market oriented” think tanks, including (among others) the Fraser Institute (Canada), the Center for the Dissemination of Economic Information (Venezuela), the Free Market Center (Belgrade), the Liberty Institute (Romania), and Unirule (Beijing). Atlas provided, among other services, one convenient conduit to launder contributions from such corporations as Philip Morris and Exxon to more specialized think tanks promoting their intellectual agenda.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 125