Product Description

With new material from the author

"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. They play a game as old as Empire but one that has taken on terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization." John Perkins should know-he was an economic hit man for an international consulting firm that worked to convince developing countries to accept enormous loans and to funnel that money to U.S. corporations. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the American government and international aid agencies were able to request their "pound of flesh" in favors, including access to natural resources, military cooperation, and political support. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is the story of one man's experiences inside the intrigue, greed, corruption and little-known government and corporate activities that America has been involved in since World War II, and which have dire consequences for the future of democracy and the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1171 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
John Perkins started and stopped writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man four times over 20 years. He says he was threatened and bribed in an effort to kill the project, but after 9/11 he finally decided to go through with this expose of his former professional life. Perkins, a former chief economist at Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main, says he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business. "Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars," Perkins writes. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an extraordinary and gripping tale of intrigue and dark machinations. Think John Le Carré, except it's a true story.

Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford. The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies. Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco. The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans. When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes. It was, Perkins writes, a clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens. While at times he seems a little overly focused on conspiracies, perhaps that's not surprising considering the life he's led. --Alex Roslin

From Publishers Weekly
Perkins spent the 1970s working as an economic planner for an international consulting firm, a job that took him to exotic locales like Indonesia and Panama, helping wealthy corporations exploit developing nations as, he claims, a not entirely unwitting front for the National Security Agency. He says he was trained early in his career by a glamorous older woman as one of many "economic hit men" advancing the cause of corporate hegemony. He also says he has wanted to tell his story for the last two decades, but his shadowy masters have either bought him off or threatened him until now. The story as presented is implausible to say the least, offering so few details that Perkins often seems paranoid, and the simplistic political analysis doesn’t enhance his credibility. Despite the claim that his work left him wracked with guilt, the artless prose is emotionally flat and generally comes across as a personal crisis of conscience blown up to monstrous proportions, casting Perkins as a victim not only of his own neuroses over class and money but of dark forces beyond his control. His claim to have assisted the House of Saud in strengthening its ties to American power brokers may be timely enough to attract some attention, but the yarn he spins is ultimately unconvincing, except perhaps to conspiracy buffs.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"John Perkins has written a book that shakes one's confidence in the ethics of the prevailing economic system." -- Jim Garrison, author, America As Empire, President of the State of the World Forum

"Must reading for those who know another world is possible!" -- Hazel Henderson, author of Beyond Globalization and Building a Win-Win World

"Perkins narrates his moral awakening to break free from the corrupt system of global domination he himself helped to create." -- Michael Brownstein

"This book is Perkins' story, that through necessity and courage offers us a way back, beyond salvation, to human justice." -- Gary Margolis Ph.D., Director, Center for Counseling and Human Relations, Associate Professor of English, Middlebury College, author, Fire in the Orchard and Falling Awake

"… true, powerful, revealing, and bone chilling personal story that names names and connects the dots . . . " -- David Korten, author of the bestselling When Corporations Rule the World

An adventure thriller that connects the dots between corporate globalization, American Empire, and the dynasty of the House of Bush. -- Dragonfly Review, November 2004

Customer Reviews

For History look elsewhere, for a sound, engaging critique read it.
John Perkins was interviewed by Leonard Lopate on WNYC Radio in New York. You can listen to the interview and make your own decision about John's book.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/11082004

Note: Although many other books have been written about how U.S. aid policy has been used as a means of manipulating foreign countries, the fact remains that John Perkin's book is from an insiders perspective. It exposes the truth behind how corporate greed has hijacked U.S. Foreign Policy. You can find many more books on the facts and history but for a sound, engaging critique read it.

No proof required
Many of the reviews here refute the truthfulness of this book because Perkins does not provide evidence for every one of his claims. But, this is precisely what makes the book an exciting and fast read. How can Perkins be expected to provide evidence for influencing events in other countries? Where should we expect to find documentation of these nefarious deeds? The inner workings of organizations like MAIN, Halliburtion, and Brown & Root are only ever known when a dissenter arises.

From my perspective, it all seems to add up. I lived in Ecuador in the 80s. I was young (18), and I didn't know much about politics at the time. I personally saw many of the projects that Perkins speaks of in this book. I heard the complaints from my Ecuadorian friends about how the U.S. was bankrupting their economy by "loaning" money for extensive construction projects. I saw the jungle along Rio Napo being deforested by unknown (to me) companies. I spent time in oil towns in the jungle -- like Shell. I saw the dam that Perkins speaks of in his book.

The only way to gather proof about the truthfulness of his claims is to see it first hand. Though I seriously doubt that most of us have the guts to travel to the places where these things happen. Denial, regarding these issues, seems terribly naive.

Unhappy view of Globalization
Here's a great scam. Offer up a large scale construction project to a country, something along the lines of a new dam or a power plant to supply electricity. Send in an economist to inflate the potential economic growth in GDP generated by the project. Lend the country the money to build the project and when the anticipated growth in GDP doesn't materialize and the country defaults on its loans you now own a country. Is this the way the world works or is it just the paranoid ravings of John Perkins?

Perkins assertion is that the United States government works in collusion with the World Bank, IMF and large construction companies like Bechtel and Halliburton in order to set up a system of dependency or financial entanglement with third world and oil rich countries in Africa, South America and the Middle East. The goal is to extend the U.S. global empire and, in the past, to halt the spread of communism. With the fall of communism the goal has transformed into plain old greed and domination.

Writers like Robert Kagan and Thomas Barnett have argued that there are two worlds out there. Barnett calls it the Core and the Gap. In the stable democratic Core we live by a certain set of rules, in the Gap we live by a different set. Barnett sees the U.S. involvement in the Gap like a cop walking a beat in a bad part of town, Kagan calls it the jungle and when in the jungle you need to fight by the laws of the jungle. The problem is, who decides what constitutes the Core and the Gap and how does this relate to business? Did the United States have the right to invade Panama, kill thousands of people and dispossess the lock because we didn't like Manual Noriega? Do indigenous people around the world not have the same property rights as American's if they live on valuable land? Do American corporations have the right to exploit people in poor countries and have them work under conditions illegal in the U.S.?

John Perkins book is an apology and an attempt at atonement for his self perceived sins for the thousands of lives he's harmed. It's also a realization that he himself was responsible for his actions, not his parents, not his school not the people at MAIN who introduced him to the business of Economic Hit Man.

In the end Perkins sees the United States standing at a crossroads and as on September 11th we may see more of the windfall of the anger fomented overseas. Perkins mentions that Asian countries might switch from the U.S. dollar to the Euro which could have disastrous effects on a U.S. economy that relies on Asian loans to support our lifestyles. This seems a bit off topic since Perkins never mentions U.S. corporations abusing Asia. In fact financial entanglement is one of the things that probably stops China from making such a move since American companies like Wal Mart import more from China than most entire countries including industrial powerhouses like Germany. Still, exposing the dark underbelly of globalization is a noble cause if only to try and improve our actions in the future. As Perkins says the United States is the one country on Earth that has the money and resources to do the right thing and improve the world for everyone and not just a small group at the top of the economic ladder.