Twenty years later, The Lancet informs us that:
“Shock therapy”, or rapid mass privatisation, in the former Soviet bloc in the first half of the 1990s was responsible for the early deaths of 1m people. [...] An analysis of the 3m working-age men who died across the former communist countries of eastern Europe suggests at least a third were victims of mass privatisation, which led to widespread unemployment and social disruption. The study adds to a growing body of research in recent years demonstrating how far the economic transition led to widespread suffering through death and physical and mental illness. The research, by David Stuckler and Lawrence King from Cambridge University and Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, takes a specific swipe at the legacy of Jeffrey Sachs, the US economist, who advocated shock therapy at the time. (Jack, “‘Shock Therapy’ Sell-offs Blamed for 1m Deaths,” FT, 15 Jan ’09)
Right on cue, the NYT’s Mustache—in a fit of some sort of U Chicagoized mashup of Freudian pathologies—urges Obama to avoid repeating the past by reenacting it (“Time for (Self) Shock Therapy,” 17 Jan ’09):