CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN by John Perkins
I first heard about this book when I was teaching at Katherine Anne Porter School in Wimberley, TX. I think it was selected for assigned reading in some of the economics classes. I then heard about it again on a documentary, and it was then that I decided to get the book.
John Perkins was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s in Ecuador when the Peace Corps was first getting started. When he finished his service, he was called upon to work for a company called Main. He alleges that he was actually recruited to work for Main by the NSA, but does not really provide substantial proof of this. During his time at Main, he came to believe that his work was part of a conspiracy – one that was at least partially overt – to enslave poor countries in the world with debt. He says that people in his field who trained him would actually refer to themselves as EHMs, or Economic Hit Men.
His job was to produce reports which would state that, in order for a country to reach its development goals, it was necessary for them to spend vast amounts of money on power lines and things like that. He claims he was encouraged to exaggerate the amount of infrastructure required so as to increase the profits of his employer when they moved in to do the work. He also was required to get the political leaders of the country in bed with him.
He was deeply torn throughout his career, in part because of his genuine love of the diversity of cultures in the world. He resented the displacement of indigenous groups and the deliberate process by which countries would be unable to pay back the massive debt accrued and would therefore have to bend to the will of corporate interest in America in the future. However, he stayed on with Main because of the massive amount of money they were willing to pay him. Later, when he decided to write this book, he was threatened and bribed.
John Perkins believes that the government, controlled by corporations, engages overtly in a 3 step process aimed at making poor countries around the world subservient to the interests of large corporations. The first step is to send in specialist Economic Hit Men like himself who attempt to engineer a political climate amenable to the interests of development companies. Since many leaders smell a rat when the EHMs come and are not willing to put the sovereignty of their country up for sale, the second step is to utilize American intelligence agencies such as the CIA to further engineer the situation using methods such as riots. Failing this, the procedure is for the intelligence community to oust the leader, either through coup or assassination. The third step, which John Perkins believes is the actual cause of what our country has been calling “activities other than war”, is to send in the military. This is done if the CIA fails with the assassination.
Many case studies from actual history are presented. I myself personally believe it is demonstrable that something very much like what is described above has happened in the past. Whether or not it is still happening today is difficult to establish, because if it were, it would be covered up very well. However, given that countries only seem to pursue the interest of their constituencies, I would guess it probably is. Governments clearly seem to be unmotivated by purely humanitarian concerns. One only has to consider the inaction and ridiculous propping up of horrible regimes in places like Somalia and Rwanda in the very recent past to see this.
The other thing I became convinced of while reading this book is that a country can be lifted from the third world to the first extraordinarily rapidly if the developed world chooses to do it. Many point to the problems foreign aid has caused in Africa as proof positive that throwing money at a country doesn’t make it developed. However, if America had the will, it could dramatically and rapidly alter any poor country on earth. This would require more than simply giving money to heads of state for them to waste, however.
Some interesting things: The Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos sounds like an amazing guy and I want to read Graham Greene‘s book Getting to Know the General. John Perkins claims that one of his workers is actually the one who popularized the use of Markhov models in economic development theory, where they used it because they couldn’t find any other way of justifying their numbers. This is the kind of stuff I do, and I’ve never heard anything like this when reading about the history of Markhov models.
Anyways, it was a good book. If what John Perkins says is true, it establishes that the evil machinations of the machine are not self-propelling, but rather that business leaders and politicians are sitting behind the wheel.