Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, In his shocking exposé, former EHM John Perkins gives an insider view into the corrupt system that cheats and strong-arms countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars and ultimately causes staggering income inequality and ecological devastation.
Author John Perkins discussed his book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" in a program sponsored by the Science, Technology and Business Division. In his book, Perkins describes his experiences as an economist of an international consulting firm whose job was to persuade strategically important developing countries, such as Panama and Indonesia, to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development and then to ensure that the lucrative projects were contracted out to U.S. corporations. According to Perkins, when it became impossible to repay these huge debts, the United States government, the World Bank or U.S.-influenced aid agencies would step in and place the countries in a trusteeship of sorts, dictating their spending budgets and other policies. Forcing these nations into enormous debt with restrictions on how they can do business so their natural resources can be exploited without compensating them.
"Economic hit men," John Perkins writes, "are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. John Perkins shares new details about the ways he and others cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Then he reveals how the deadly EHM cancer he helped create has spread far more widely and deeply than ever in the US and everywhere else—to become the dominant system of business, government, and society today. Finally, he gives an insider view of what we each can do to change it.
Economic hit men are the shock troops of what Perkins calls the corporatocracy, a vast network of corporations, banks, colluding governments, and the rich and powerful people tied to them. Basically instead of capitalism corporations control the government and make the vote moot. Because the USA has legalized corporations to buy politicians and this is allowed by manipulating the cowardly who adhere to systems of white supremacy that actually keep the masses struggling financially. Profits from corporations go mainly to top tier white collar workers and everyone else is paid only so they can maintain their status as consumers. Corporations also control the pricing of the marketplace because they no longer are kept from forming monopolies thus the buyer has no options but to pay the prices corporations decide.
If the EHMs can't maintain the corrupt status quo through nonviolent coercion, the jackal assassins swoop in. The heart of this book is a completely new section, over 100 pages long, that exposes the fact that all the EHM and jackal tools—false economics, false promises, threats, bribes, extortion, debt, deception, coups, assassinations, unbridled military power—are used around the world today exponentially more than during the era Perkins exposed over a decade ago.
The material in this new section ranges from the Seychelles, Honduras, Ecuador, and Libya to Turkey, Western Europe, Vietnam, China, and, in perhaps the most unexpected and sinister development, the United States, where the new EHMs—bankers, lobbyists, corporate executives, and others—“con governments and the public into submitting to policies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer.”
But as dark as the story gets, this reformed EHM also provides hope. Perkins offers a detailed list of specific actions each of us can take to transform what he calls a failing Death Economy into a Life Economy that provides sustainable abundance for all.