I pasted it up for you... its a fascinating account on the surface.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
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This article is about the book. For the song by Anti-Flag, see
For Blood and Empire.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a
semi-autobiographical book written by
John Perkins, first published in 2004.
[1][2]
The book provides Perkins' account of his career with
engineering consulting firm
Chas. T. Main in Boston. According to Perkins, his job at the firm was to convince leaders of
underdeveloped countries to accept substantial development loans for large construction and engineering projects. Ensuring that these projects were contracted to U.S. companies, such loans provided political influence for the US and access to
natural resources for American companies,
[1]: 15, 239 thus primarily helping rich families and local elites, rather than the poor. According to Perkins, he began writing
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man in the 1980s, but "threats or bribes always convinced [him] to stop."
Suggesting a system of
corporatocracy and greed (rather than a
unilateral conspiracy), Perkins claims the involvement of the
National Security Agency (NSA), with whom he had interviewed for a job prior to joining Main. According to the author, this interview effectively constituted an independent screening that led to his subsequent hiring as an 'economic hit man' by Einar Greve,
[3] vice president of the firm (and alleged NSA liaison).
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man was met with skepticism about the accuracy of Perkins's claims from some.
Contents
Content[edit]
The book heavily criticizes
U.S. foreign policy and the notion that "all economic growth benefits humankind, and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits."
[1]: xii Perkins suggests that, in many cases, only a small portion of the population benefits at the expense of the rest, pointing to, as an example, an increase in
income inequality, whereby large U.S. corporations exploit cheap labor, and
oil companies destroy local environments.
[1]: xii
Perkins describes what he calls a system of
corporatocracy and greed as the driving forces behind establishing the United States as a global empire, in which he took a role as an "economic hit man" to expand its influence.
Perkins' function, according to the book, was to convince the political and financial leadership of
developing countries to accept enormous development loans from institutions like the
World Bank and
USAID. Saddled with debts they could not hope to pay, such countries would then be forced to acquiesce to political pressure from the United States on a variety of issues. Perkins argues that these nations were effectively neutralized politically, with their
wealth gaps driven wider and their long-term economies crippled. In this capacity, Perkins recounts his meetings with some prominent individuals, including
Graham Greene and
Omar Torrijos. Perkins describes the role of an economic hit man as follows:
Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.[
citation needed]
Affirming conspiracy[edit]
Perkins affirms the existence of a "
conspiracy" between the U.S. government, its covert apparatus, private corporations used as cover, and individuals employed by them to the government's bidding, in such activities as overthrowing democratically elected foreign governments:
[4]
I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the
National Security Agency, the nation’s largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950s,
Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of
Teddy, who
overthrew the government of Iran, a democratically elected government,
Mossadegh’s
government who was
Time magazine's
person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed—well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the
Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn’t have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a
C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.
— John Perkins, November 4, 2004,
Democracy Now!, interview
Reception and criticism[edit]
Although the accuracy of the content has been questioned, the book did well in terms of sales, placing on the
best-seller lists of both the
New York Times and
Amazon.
[5]
Columnist
Sebastian Mallaby of
The Washington Post reacted sharply to Perkins' book: "This man is a frothing conspiracy theorist, a vainglorious peddler of nonsense, and yet his book,
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is a runaway bestseller."
[6] This charge is brought against Perkins despite the fact that he denounces conspiracy-thinking at numerous places in the book itself.
[1]: 217 Mallaby, who spent 13 years writing for the London
Economist and wrote a critically well-received biography of
World Bank chief
James Wolfensohn,
[7] holds that Perkins' conception of international finance is "largely a dream" and that his "basic contentions are flat wrong."
[6] For instance, he points out that
Indonesia reduced its
infant mortality and
illiteracy rates by two-thirds after economists persuaded its leaders to borrow money in 1970. He also disputes Perkins' claim that 51 of the top 100 world economies belong to companies.
[8] A
value-added comparison shows that 29 countries are in the top 100, while the rest are companies.
[9]
Other sources, including articles in
The New York Times and
Boston Magazine, as well as a press release issued by the
U.S Department of State (DOS), have referred to a lack of documentary or
testimonial evidence to corroborate Perkins's claim that the NSA was involved in his hiring to
Chas T. Main. In addition, the author of the DOS release states that the NSA "is a
cryptological (codemaking and
codebreaking) organization, not an economic organization" and that its missions do not involve "anything remotely resembling placing economists at private companies in order to increase the debt of foreign countries."
[10]
Economic historian Niall Ferguson addresses some of Perkins's claims in the 2008 book
The Ascent of Money (2008). Perkins contended that the leaders of
Ecuador (President
Jaime Roldós Aguilera) and
Panama (General
Omar Torrijos) were killed by U.S. agents for opposing the interests of the owners of their countries' foreign debt. Both men died in airplane crashes in 1981. According to Ferguson, Perkins's allegations "seems a little odd."
[11] Ferguson notes how in the 1970s, the amount of money that the US had lent to Ecuador and Panama accounted for less than 0.4% of the total U.S. grants and loans, while in 1990, exports from the US to those countries accounted for approximately 0.4% of total U.S. exports (approx.
US$8 billion). Ferguson contends those "do not seem like figures worth killing for."
[11] Perkins, however, maintains that the motives for such actions, rather than loans, would have been the securing of the
Panama Canal as a permanent United States asset, and gaining access to Ecuadorian oil.
Chas. T. Main's former vice president Einar Greve, who first offered Perkins a job at the firm,
[1]: 10 initially affirmed the overall validity of the book:
[12]
Basically his story is true.… What John's book says is, there was a conspiracy to put all these countries on the hook, and that happened. Whether or not it was some sinister plot or not is up to interpretation, but many of these countries are still over the barrel and have never been able to repay the loans.
On being asked by another reporter about Perkins' account, however, Greve re-read the book and denied some aspects of Perkins' claims, such as the NSA having any links to Main, or that Perkins was seduced by Claudine Martin.
[13]
