[...] By the end of the 1970s, the era of neoliberal globalization had dawned, displacing visions of a welfare world. Leading the opposition to the NIEO, the World Bank and IMF rejected its aspiration to democratic and universal international economic law. Instead, these financial institutions insulated the global economy from political contestation by recasting it as the domain of technocratic expertise. In doing so, they rejected the claim that the global economy could be subject to demands for redistribution. The colony went free, stood for a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again toward servitude—this time to the empire of debt.