Except none of this is true. I have a master's degree in economics, I can assure you that nobody talks about neoliberalism and it is not a branch of economics. Nor was it invented in America. The term first appears in Germany in 1938; where it was used to describe a political ideology and not an economic school. Nor was it a pro-free market term, originally neoliberalism was used to describe "third way" politics that melded free markets and state interventionism, because it recognised that classical liberalism didn't actually tend to lead to greater freedoms. This use of the terminology persists through to the 1960s and even early 1970s, the main neoliberal (against as a political term) theorists are Röpke and Rüstow; the latter being well-remembered for writing a series of rather scorching articles against free market failings.
After the 1970s, the phrase became subject to a backlash because leftists felt that the movement was being co-opted from trying to synthesize socialist and capitalist principles to being a disguise for free-market reforms without upsetting socialists (see Barbara Castle and Denis Healey being tarred with the label). After this point, the word becomes somewhat meaningless. By the 1980s, neoliberal encompasses everything from Thatcher to Peters (see Peters' 1983 article A Neoliberal's Manifesto, where the third part is dedicated to attacking the very corporatocracy you ascribe to neoliberalism). The term is now essentially just a generic pejorative for "any idea I don't approve of", and largely died out in academic use in the early 1990s at the latest. You will look far and wide to find anyone who self-describes as a neoliberal; the term is just hot air.
