De Castro was forced to resign from office at the beginning of 1982, as were also the minister of the interior, Sergio Fernández, and the mining minister, José Piñera. They were all replaced by military officers, corporate officers, and neoliberals who had proven more willing and flexible with regard to neoliberal principles in the short run. The regime devalued the currency and introduced various measures to protect domestic business. The new superminister of finance and economics was another MPS member, the Chicago-trained economist Rolf Lüders, who had been vice president of the BHC group before being called to office. Lüders decided to direct government support to indebted enterprises and to save the private banking system by way of state intervention, or, in his own words, “to rescue the financial system but not their owners” (Lüders 1993, 163).

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1597