There is an ongoing debate on interest rates in the world. Irrespective of in what manner this debate is initiated, it is essentially on an economic model and understanding. Will the negative interest rate policy that is pursued by central banks be a remedy for the crisis? I think this policy will hardly work, as the dynamics of the crisis are more profound. The crisis is a result of the damage in the core of the system, not of the one in its shell. This is why it cannot be resolved with monetary measures and monetary policy instruments, as American economist Milton Friedman suggests.

On the other hand, debate on economic models has a political aspect as well. It would be rather misleading to initiate a discussion only through the lexical and technical meanings of words. Paul Bremer, who served as the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq for a year following the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq, issued a declaration on Sept. 19, 2003 on behalf of the U.S. administration to rapidly establish freedom and democracy in Iraq. The declaration stipulated that all foreign companies would be granted the ownership of Iraqi enterprises; public enterprises would be sold without delay; foreign companies and individuals would transfer all of their profits and gains outside of the country without any reserve; all customs barriers and all other barriers applied to foreign companies would be removed.

As is known, the administration of George W. Bush sought various pretexts to intervene in Iraq following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Eventually, the invasion began with a number of lame operational excuses based on the mission that the U.S. would bring "freedom" to the Iraqi people. It has been 13 years since Bremer issued the declaration of "freedom," however, Iraq still does not have a competent government that can evaluate the world's most important reserves in the country and nobody can measure the amount of cash that was transferred abroad so that the Iraqi people would be "free."

Bremer had made all "democratic" legal regulations that would ensure the "perfect" functioning of "free" market and trade in Iraq before he turned the administration over to the "Iraqi" government that was appointed by the U.S. in 2004. These regulations also included detailed adjustments regarding copyrights and intellectual property rights, which are not found even in many developed countries today. In other words, the U.S. carried out all the "liberal" reforms that Iraq needed in 2004. The Iraqi central bank became fully independent and the Iraqi economy became fully open to liberalism.

Certainly, Bremer's flimsy liberalism does not have any benefits for Iraq today, as such liberalism overlooked the social and historical facts of Iraq and the whole of the Middle East and made all the plans in line with the U.S.'s interests. I wonder what an Iraqi would say if he were asked what the U.S.'s brand-new liberalism, which includes the most contemporary copyrights and intellectual property rights, brought to his country. This liberalism in Iraq was not invented by Bremer himself, as we saw a similar operation in Chile on Sept. 11, 1973 when General Augusto Pinochet staged a coup d'etat to overthrow and kill the country's democratically elected President Salvador Allende. Pinochet was not a statist and "bigoted" general and he was mentored by Milton Friedman, who also inspired Bremer and his projects in Iraq. Friedman's ultra-liberalism was a new hope for business circles that thought that Keynesian statism would drag them into bankruptcy. That time's constructive politicians, such as Henry Kissinger, clung to this hope like a drowning man who clutches at a straw. Kissinger supported all coups in Latin American countries, including Chile, and created political and diplomatic arms of neoliberal policies pursued in the countries. Friedman's new liberalism reduced the state to a giant military structure only for the sake of security and authorized it to infringe and eliminate all rights, including staging coups, for the "security" of capital. Apart from this, the state could not intervene in the economy and make economic regulations in any way. Moreover, Friedman and his buddies were obsessed with inflation as statist practices and welfare benefits restricted the profit fields of the private sector and disturbed the market balance by leading to inflation. They needed to remember what happened to Germany prior to World War II. After all, inflation was a monetary phenomenon and it would not occur if interest rates were hiked and money was reduced in accordance with the quantity theory. There was no such thing as a free lunch; lunches even in schools and military barracks would be privatized and sold.

Today, we have learned that inflation is not a monetary phenomenon, but a malady stemming from production and production costs such as financing in countries like Turkey. I underline this once again for those who miss the point. We have also learned that interests can resolve neither unemployment nor inflation on their own; low interest rates cannot end economic recession in developed countries and high interest rates cannot eliminate inflation in developing countries. We have also learned that there is no such thing as Bremer's freedom or liberalism when we look at the Middle East.