Promoted. Originally authored/posted 2008-02-08 16:38:42 -0500.

Chalmers Johnson has an lengthy but very informative review of South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang’s Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism at truthdig.org
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Pub. Date: December 2007
ISBN-13: 9781596913998
288pp

via TruthDig-- from the Publisher:

With irreverent wit, an engagingly personal style, and a battery of real-life examples, Ha-Joon Chang blasts holes in the "World Is Flat" orthodoxy of Thomas Friedman and other neo-liberal economists who argue that only unfettered capitalism and wide-open international trade can lift struggling nations out of poverty. On the contrary, Chang shows, today's economic superpowers - from the United States to Britain to his native South Korea - all attained prosperity by shameless protectionism and government intervention in industry. We in the wealthy nations have conveniently forgotten this fact, telling ourselves a fairy tale about the magic of free trade and - via our proxies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization - ramming policies that suit ourselves down the throat of the developing world.

Since the days of Reagan, America has been chasing a Theory.

Since the Clinton era, and the rise of NAFTA and Global Free Trade, our "Corporate Leaders" have been conducting an unprecedented Social Experiment.

The Experiment: Economic Darwinism

The Test Subjects in this Experiment: none other than American Workers and our "more competitive" counterparts, overseas.