In de-regulating financial markets worldwide, the Thatcher-Reagan revolution brought about the corruption of money, without improving on the previous growth of wealth – except for the very wealthy. The average world citizen would have been 20% richer had world GDP per capita grown at the same rate between 1980 and 2007 as it did between 1950 and 1973 – and this despite China’s high growth rates in the past 20 years.