This article introduces the "Policy Futures in Education" special issue on neoliberalism, reviewing its origins in the founding of the Mt Perelin Society at the beginning of the Cold War and its political phase with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's policies in the 1980s. It sets the scene for the rest of the issue and investigates the financial collapse and its consequences in terms of the decline of a US-centric world. (Contains 11 notes.)