The Profligate Colonial: How the US Exported Austerity to the Philippines

In The Profligate Colonial, Lisandro E. Claudio reveals how austerity, long before it became a buzzword of modern technocracy, was a tool of US empire.

Austerity is often praised as prudence in hard times, a responsible response to crisis. In the Philippines today, it is treated as common sense, an unquestioned commitment to a strong currency, low inflation, and fiscal restraint. Claudio argues that this orthodoxy is in fact a colonial inheritance—a legacy of American rule that cast Filipino...