Harberger oversaw a US government–sponsored partnership between the Catholic University of Chile and the University of Chicago, which, he reflected, spawned more than a dozen key ministers, Central Bank presidents and budget directors. The Chile Project stretched back to the era of import-substitution industrialization of the 1950s – a time, he reflected, when the watchwords across Latin America were 'interventionism, paternalism, nationalism, and socialism'. The Chicago Boys' opposition to the politicisation of the economy preceded Allende's victory by decades; but his socialist government's economic planning, Keynesian demand-stimulation and wealth redistribution provided their ideal adversary, and brought them to the attention of Chile's business elites. From the Chicago-inspired perspective of these técnicos, Allende's proposals amounted to an ignorant violation of the laws of the economy and the destruction of a free society.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 316