I've been reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

You should read it, basically the premise is that what is dressed up as development aid is actually the creation of unsustainable levels of debt that compromise the soverignity of devloping nations.  A more subtle form of empire for sure, but even in the 1860's Mexican debt defaults lead to the enthronement of Maximillian, an Austrian on the throne of Mexico.

The hostility to Chavez from the United States is growing, because he helped Argentina pay off its debts to the IMF and World Bank.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

These theoretically new economic ideas were now scarcely recognisable as the simplistic economic arguments of pre-1929. The religious fervour had been blended with sparkling waves of new technology and with masses of microeconomic data, all presented as fact. Relaunched in this way, as three in one, one in three, the old ideas seemed new.

Caught up as the liberal elites were in the instrumental rationality of program management, they responded to this attack with superior, stolid and unimaginative rejection. Instead of speaking out for the public good, they defended administrative structures. The effect was to make tired and discredited market arguments seem young, agile and modern.

Now he doesn't dot the last I and tell us that the theories of the 1920's were elite-centred theories in the service of wealth concentration and a self-appointed "gilded aristocracy".  But I think he assumes that we understand this...

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...