Last month the International Monetary Fund issued a report admitting that neoliberalism – the economic philosophy which has driven Western capitalism for decades – has been a failure.

The report, “Neoliberalism: Oversold?” strikes at the core of this evil ideology and echoes what critics of neoliberalism have been saying all along: instead of delivering economic growth, the report conclusively shows that the neoliberal policies of fiscal austerity and deregulation have increased inequality exponentially across the board.

The IMF report suggests that neoliberalism has been a failure, but in reality it has worked out quite well for the global 1%, which was always the intent and purpose of the IMF and World Bank. Oxfam reported earlier this year that the richest 1 percent now own as much wealth as the rest of the planet’s population combined.

The admission is merely an indicator of how completely entrenched neoliberal capitalism has become. The IMF knows they can flaunt a failed policy and nobody can do a thing about it.

Neoliberalism has been wildly successful in accomplishing what it was really formulated to do: shift the wealth of the planet to the global parasites; the 1%.

Neoliberalism – defined as economic policy that shifts wealth upwards through deregulation of the banking sector and liberal tax cuts for the wealthy – did not cause the decline in wealth creation. Capitalism began to die in the late 1970s. The economic elites introduced neoliberal policies because their wealth-creating machine was slowing down.

So instead of creating wealth – which they could no longer do with sufficient ease and alacrity – they implemented policies to simply EXTRACT wealth from the remaining 99% of humanity.

But the real culprit is not neoliberal capitalism; it is capitalism itself. Americans have been duped into believing in an economic system that enriches the few over the many – through the use of sophisticated propaganda. Remember the “trickle down” theory? What a load of crap!

Free markets worked for a little while in the USA but we also had a huge, resource-rich country and all the stuff which had already been built by a whole bunch of un-free workers a couple hundred years before to build upon.

Then it stopped working because Reagan gave the rightwing ideologues free-rein to remake the country as they wished. They wanted to make obscene profits while inflicting as much pain and misery as they could on the working classes.

Neoliberalism may have under-performed in some minor areas but it has worked exactly as designed by the bankers and capitalists. It has enabled them to become extraordinarily wealthy and powerful. Significantly, the economic elite also understand that there is no force on earth powerful enough to take away their money or their power and thus reset the rules of the game.

They are bad winners, but they aren’t finished gloating just yet. Expect a lot more misery.