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Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man
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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.
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