The SKHĒMA Lexicon of Economics (Vol. I)

Thatcherism noun

  1. How to privatize everything and still call it freedom.
    A British ideology in which milk was snatched from schoolchildren

    while fortunes were poured into the pockets of bankers.

  2. The act of selling the public silverware and charging rent to use it afterwards.

  3. Synonyms: Iron Lady economics, monetarist zeal, privatized cruelty.

Austerity noun
– A solemn ritual where the poor are sacrificed to appease the markets, while the rich continue their feast uninterrupted.
– Synonyms: “shared sacrifice” (where only one side bleeds), fiscal hairshirt.

Quantitative Easing noun
– The art of printing money for banks and calling it “stability.”
– A magician’s trick where liquidity floods Wall Street while Main Street gets drought warnings.
– Synonyms: financial steroids, inflation for the rich only

World Bank noun
– A benevolent lender whose generosity leaves nations permanently in debt.
– “Development aid” repaid a hundred times over in interest.
– Synonyms: pawnshop for the Global South, colonialism 2.0.

IMF abbr.
– International Ministry of Famine.
– The horseman of economic pestilence, riding from capital to capital, binding nations in chains of eternal debt.
– Its sacraments: privatize, impoverish, perish.

Deregulation noun
– The systematic removal of rules so corporations can do what they were going to do anyway, but legally.
– Synonyms: legalized looting, free-market nihilism.

Trickle-Down Economics noun
– A theory that the rich should drink champagne because eventually the poor will get to lick the spilled drops from the carpet.
– Synonyms: feudal leftovers, prosperity’s placebo.

Globalization noun
– The spread of sweatshops, surveillance, and Big Macs in the name of freedom.
– Synonyms: planetary homogenization, worldwide mall.

Friedmanomics noun

  1. The divine revelation that greed is good, efficiency is holy, and suffering is a rounding error.

  2. An economic gospel preached by Milton Friedman: free markets always know best (unless they collapse, in which case the taxpayers intervene).

  3. Synonyms: Chicago gospel, invisible-hand worship, laissez-faire lunacy.

Recession noun
– A polite term for economic despair, when millions lose jobs but billionaires buy bigger yachts.
– Synonyms: business cycle hiccup, proletarian purge.

Stock Market noun
– A casino where the house always wins, only this time the chips are pensions, homes, and futures.
– Synonyms: legalized gambling, roulette of ruin.

Neoliberalism noun

  1. A faith-based belief system disguised as economics.
    The idea that free markets solve everything — including the problems created by free markets.

  2. The secular religion of deregulation, debt, and despair.

  3. Synonyms: casino capitalism, austerity theology, trickle-down catechism.

GDP abbr.
– Gross Domestic Propaganda.
– A measure of how much useless crap a nation produces, regardless of who dies making it or who can afford to buy it.
– Synonyms: statistical sorcery, growth fetishism.

Reaganomics noun

  1. How to destroy an economy while smiling for the cameras.
    A 1980s American economic experiment consisting of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation for corporations, and a trickle-down theory in which nothing ever trickled down.

  2. The sacred art of feeding the wealthy foie gras while prescribing austerity to the poor.

  3. Synonyms: voodoo economics, neoliberal snake oil, polite class war.