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In the summer of 1989, Sachs was in Warsaw advising the Polish reformers who had won a historic victory in parliamentary elections. At a late-night meeting, he and a colleague, David Lipton, sketched out some ideas for decontrolling prices immediately, stabilizing the currency, cancelling foreign debts, and, eventually, privatizing state-owned enterprises. Jacek Kuron, one of the leaders of the Solidarity movement, told them to write up a plan. Sachs said they would go back to America and fax over some material within a week or two. “What do you mean?” Kuron demanded. “I need this tomorrow morning.”

Sachs and Lipton worked through the night, and by dawn had completed a fifteen-page brief with a specific chronology of policy reforms. “It was the first time, I believe, that anyone had written down a comprehensive plan for the transformation of a socialist economy to a market economy,” Sachs recounts. “Our proposal was for a dramatic, quick transformation.” Some Polish economists advocated less radical changes, arguing that their country had neither the institutions nor the expertise necessary to handle unbridled capitalism, but on January 1, 1990, the government enacted the main elements of the Sachs-Lipton all-nighter as part of a new policy that was widely referred to as “shock therapy,” a phrase Sachs now dismisses as a misleading “journalistic concoction.” Freed from government control, prices soared, and many people saw their savings wiped out. Unemployment rose sharply, too, especially in the heavy industries that had provided most of Solidarity’s support.