On January 1st, Jair Bolsonaro will take office as Brazil’s 38th president. He will do so on a platform chock full of brash and heavy-handed social policies, yet one underpinned by ultraliberal economics and the vesting of extensive power into the hands of economist Paulo Guedes, a University of Chicago graduate.
In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile after a military coup. While imposing his brutal regime on the Chilean people, General Pinochet also handed the reins of the country’s economy to a group of economists, fresh off the plane from the very same University of...