Adam Curtis, "
The Curse of TINA,"
The Medium and the Message, 13 September 2011.
Curtis laments the absence of new ideas during the current economic crisis and identifies one reason for that lack in the ascendency of "think tanks." He examines the origins of "think tanks," focusing on the UK's
Institute of Economic Affairs, and demonstrates that they are basically public relations fronts for the status quo. Curtis's argument is based on the UK experience, but his observations apply equally to the U.S., e.g.,
American Enterprise Institute;
Cato Institute. See Curtis's film
The Century of the Self (2002) which describes the rise of
Public Relations in the U.S. On the rise of technocratic government see his films
The Trap (2007) and
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011). The "TINA" of the title refers to the status quo / right wing / libertarian / laissez-faire / neoliberal bludgeon that "There Is No Alternative" which has been widely accepted in the post-Cold War era.
I find Curtis's excerpts from his film
The League of Gentlemen (one of six in his
Pandora's Box series (1992)) especially interesting: he recounts the UK's adoption of
Monetarism policy during the Thatcher period which resulted in massive unemployment, factory closures, etc. in an effort to control inflation. The identical policies, instigated by Paul Volker, were implemented in the U.S. beginning in 1979-1980 during the last years of the Carter administration and throughout the Reagan administration. The behind-the-scenes blundering that led to this policy change in the U.S. is described by Judith Stein in
Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) [
publisher;
Google Books;
Amazon.com].
