What an awesome passage this is. It's a mystery to me why more people aren't aware of the Washington Consensus. It's been around for decades, but I think that if you polled average Americans, most people would answer with blank stares. As the author points out, it is the ideology of recent times. I suppose it's a credit to its architects that they've been able to keep is more or less obscure. That must be by design.The first strategy, reflecting the ossification of its ruling elites, consists of repeating that nothing is wrong, that the status quo reflects the nation’s unique good fortune in being favored by God and that those calling for change are merely subversive troublemakers. As the French ancien régime, the Romanov dynasty and the Habsburg emperors discovered, the strategy works splendidly for a while, particularly if one has a talent for dismissing unpleasant facts. The final results, however, are likely to be thoroughly disappointing.