Naomi Klein's recent book is called the Shock Doctrine and the rise of Disaster capitalism. www.naomiklein.org

I just heard an interview with her the other day, and the gist of it is
that its perfectly ok in fact intentional to create or take advantage of a state of affairs - such as 9/11 , Katrina or a large debt to force -
economic shock therapy on citizens that would otherwise be difficult to do in a healthy economy.

(Its not necessarily the US and right wing capitalism that has taken advantage of it, it could be any ideology, but the last 35 years or so it has been market capitalism - and the intention is to chip away at established policy such as social security, medicare etc..)

this 'shock therapy' has been used in Pinochets Chile, Argentina, Yeltsins Russia, and especially in US occupied Iraq they brought in Yegor Gaidar the Russian who was most responsible for implementing it in Yeltsins Russia where state industry was quickly sold off, any food and gas subsidies were discontinued. Gaidars view was that in Iraq, it should be done as quickly as possible even faster than in Russia to take advantage of a disoriented population.

usually the powers that be try to rewrite history and say something like - this is a new world (post 911) everything you believed about the world has changed etc.. etc.

so in the US a large debt, gives the conservatives the power to break the old keynesian system (and ultimately creates permanent underclass)