The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (PDF)

Description

Featuring 15 explosive new chapters, this new edition of the New York Times bestseller brings the story of Economic Hit Men up-to-date and, chillingly, home to the U.S.―but it also gives us hope and the tools to fight back. Former economic hit man 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. 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. As dark as the story gets, this reformed EHM also provides hope. Perkins offers 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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐My friend Stan is approaching his 50th and in his old age is becoming a bit of a conspiracy theorist. He emailed me a list of books to read, most of which are not easy to find, but Confessions was on it, so I ordered the new, expanded book to see what the fuss is all about.For starters, the “15 explosive new Chapters with new Revelations” are a waste of time. Whereas in the original you find yourself riding with John Perkins in Ecuador, Panama, Iran, Boston, Jakarta and Washington, in the second part you’re reading his interpretation of public information and it’s got to be said that this particular reading of it is covered much better by authors like Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, John Mackey, Jeff Sachs etc. The man has little to add.The first part’s alright, on the other hand.In what is quite a tight narrative, you find out about the life and times of a Robert McNamara / Indiana Jones wannabe as he jumps from the Hilton to the Intercontinental, from Panama to Indonesia, from his wife to his clandestine girlfriend, leaving behind him a trail of destruction. Not quite, but not too far from it either.It’s cool. But it’s also grumpy. It’s basically like that Jim Rogers book with the yellow Mercedes on the front cover, except the guy swaps girls and uses the plane a lot. And rather than buy stocks along the way, he sells electricity projects, basically, and feels very bad about it because these people don’t need electricity, apparently.Oh, and he’s so negative about everything. That’s the downer. The guy feels so guilty, you know. Not guilty enough not to idolize the mythical “jackals” who hop from town to town to execute non-compliant dictators, but, you know, guilty.Which he needn’t be, since none of his actions really matter. The book was fun, but in truth the “Economic Hit Man” was a nobody. Allow me to elaborate on that, through the story of my own country.I was raised in Greece, which was quite genuinely on the frontline of the cold war. Athens was held by armed communists after WWII and the UK military quite officially (NOT clandestinely) joined the defeated Greek nationalist forces to drive the communists out. The “reds” who briefly took over my country were not a figment of somebody’s imagination, they had flesh and bones and Russian weapons.As soon as the civil war ended in favor of the Nationalists, my country was put on a strict diet of US aid, good and bad. Greece became the world’s #1 per capita recipient of Marshall Plan aid. Same as in Latin America, industries were pretty much “given” to the business aristocracy of the land. Loans were extended to Greek businessmen to buy cast-off American manufacturing equipment, for example, with the protection of gigantic tariffs taking care of the fact that the end products would not exactly be cutting edge.Never having originated in Greece, these businesses did not take advantage of my country’s idiosyncrasies and advantages. Extreme examples include a bauxite processing plant in beautiful Delphi (which incidentally still operates thanks to a grant of free energy), refineries and shipping docks in ancient Eleusis, fabrics in Patras etc. The only thing that saved us from the discovery of oil destroying the beautiful Aegean was that the equally enlightened Turkish government laid claim to the discovered oil, thankfully leading to the sensible decision to leave it under the ground where it belongs.Greece was forced to spend an unconscionable percent of GDP on NATO-procured armaments (and remains to this day one of the few members that allocate in excess of 2% to defense) and had a military dictatorship imposed from 1967 to 1974. We even had the odd extrajudicial killing of the kind Perkins describes, with two prominent members of the left (Labrakis and Panagoulis) perishing in suspect traffic accidents immediately before and after this period.In 1974 the US “military industrial complex” failed my country completely. Much as the CIA’s leadership was in cahoots with our military government, it was caught napping by Henry Kissinger as the State Department organized the Turkish invasion of Cyprus without consulting with President Ford or with anybody else until the facts on the ground were fully shaped.Retribution was swift. Greece not being a banana republic (at the time) or geographically located within the mandate of the Monroe doctrine, we proudly kicked out our US-backed dictators, withdrew from NATO and there was very little Uncle Sam could do about it as we went straight into the embrace of the European Economic Community (and then back into the NATO fold, but from a position of relative strength.) In 1981, five months after our new French (pay-)masters, we proudly elected a Socialist government, even.The story since then has of course not been a proud story at all. EU membership afforded to populist governments the funds to nationalize the collapsing hitherto tariff-protected industries, rather than shut them down. Funds meant to be invested in infrastructure transmogrified into several massive entitlements programs that persist today, IMF memoranda notwithstanding. The size of government rose 4-fold. As I’m writing this, the US Federal government only employs twice as many people as the Greek government (yes, that’s very far from a like-for-like comparison, but still!) Finally, membership in the Euro currency union allowed Greece to borrow more money than it will ever be able to repay.What’s the Economic Hit Man got to do with this all? How does my country’s story and the way I lived it counter John Perkins’ simplistic narrative?Every which way, is the short answer.I’ll choose letter N to answer this one.I have three friends called Nikos whose parents would have been direct interlocutors for John Perkins in Greece, had his work for the “military industrial complex” brought him to our shores. Nikos N’s daddy was in the energy industry and the engineer behind several electric power projects, of the kind that electrified my grandparents’ house when I was a boy. Nikos K’s daddy was in the tobacco industry and a major beneficiary of the mercantilist economic policies, but also a generous contributor to causes and a very solid employer until tariffs collapsed with our entry to the European Community, laying waste to his empire. Nikos S’s daddy, finally, was by general admission a CIA operative. He had a steady job, but we all knew he was reporting back to his American masters. All are fervent nationalists, excellent family men and have spawned successful children, all of whom received their high school education in Greece, all of whom did some of their studies in the US and more than half of whom now live abroad. None of them has a fortune to show for his efforts or much to answer for, as far as I’m concerned, and that probably includes the CIA informer.With that out of the way and with no further ado, here’s a short list of how John Perkins’ findings and confessions collide with my country’s story and my friends’ parents’ stories:1. The country’s Debt/GDP ratio when we kicked out the Americans was 18%. I’m not saying that’s zero, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the 250% it reached later. Bottom line is because it’s American private companies that sell you the sundry projects / weapons, not the government, it is NOT in the interest of the US to see its allies over-indebted. Au contraire, if you place an order to buy Phantoms in five years’ time, you’d better look after your finances between now and then. By the way, that’s true everywhere, not just for the US. When horrible communist dictator Ceausescu died, there might have been an army of AIDS babies in Romania, but the state was pretty much debt-free. That was almost a condition imposed on its client state by the Soviets. SUMMARY OF THIS POINT: The US has never had a policy of controlling its client states through debt. To the extent that overborrowing occurred in Latin America it was a mistake made by the money center banks and they paid for it dearly.2. There is absolutely nothing wrong with building roads and electrical plants in poor countries. Electrification is as close as you can get to a “fundamental right” in our days. I remember life in my grandparents’ house before electricity and I’ll sum it up in one word: dysentery. Similarly, India’s progress today is mainly halted by the absence of a road network. The Chinese are having to choose between the environment and electrification and it’s no contest. If somebody is offering you a loan to build your first electrical plant or an important trunk road, TAKE IT. And my friend Nikos N’s daddy is a national hero, as far as I’m concerned, for designing and building those plants.3. Absolute right and wrong is a luxury in a world of scarcity and limited choice. Yes, my country did not only benefit from being a US semi-protectorate between 1948 and 1974. We took the rough with the smooth. But a quick look at the lasting predicament of our northern neighbors (Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria) and the Yugoslavian civil war of 1992-94, especially, makes it patently clear we got by far the better of the two deals available. And if that meant we had to do some things to appease the military industrial complex, if that means a few of us had to work for the CIA, even, it’s a sad state of affairs, but you are only allowed to consider it in the context of your alternatives.4. How is proud, sovereign, European Greece doing right now? How did Sarah Palin put it? The hopey-changey thing did not work out for us, did it? Under the Americans we knew what we were giving up, of course. But the EU was not exactly something for nothing. A priori, what Perkins is saying sounds wonderful. Hell, in principle I agree with him. In practice it looks very different. We wasted our sovereignty.With this little rant over, I must say I enjoyed his “Grumpy Jim Rogers” thing and I actually learned tons from it. Like, I don’t for one second doubt that his employer and Bechtel and Halliburton were at some point in time the tail wagging the dog of American foreign policy. Even if that’s mainly because foreign policy is not very important to the US, it is regardless quite interesting and the detail offered here is quite extensive. Names and addresses! And perhaps when the original book came out it was a surprise for people to hear that the US made the Bin Ladens.Also, I know terribly little about Latin American politics. I had no idea Panama was once the northern tip of Colombia. Manuel Noriega was to me a villain with bad acne who once did terrible things with a Coke bottle. Now I know he was a CIA informer for 20 years and that the CIA disposed of him rather ruthlessly when he turned against his masters. My feelings toward him and his acne are not much changed, but my bank of knowledge has expanded.In summary, the first part of this book is a fun read if you can stand the author’s negativity, but it’s not all it’s trumped up to be. The second part of the book you should skip.P.S. If I never hear about the Pachamama Alliance again, it might still be too soon

⭐John Perkins is an economic hitman. He spent over a decade pressuring the presidents of poor countries into signing exorbitant contracts with major US construction companies (think Halliburton and Bechtel) that were financed by major international banks (think Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.) In theory, these agreements were supposed help underdeveloped countries export their natural resources and create wealth for their economy. This wealth would then ostensibly go towards building schools, hospitals, and other important social projects for the people and thus raise them out of poverty. What these countries didn’t realize was that they had been sold a lie. The money they made was never enough to pay back the massive loans they had agreed to and they were left helpless as they watched the interest continue to rise and the money continue to leave. Time and time again the profits went back to the big American banks and companies while the indigenous people got screwed both financially and environmentally.If this scheme sounds familiar, it is because it is exactly the same formula endorsed by our federal student loan program. A large bank, on behalf the government, gets a naive 18-year-old to sign a contract. The forecast is a set amount of years of school followed by a good job and a few years of paying it back. Yet how many Americans are well into their adult lives and still paying down their debts, feeling shackled to their monetary commitments? I myself graduated from a four year college with around $37,000 worth of federal student loans. It has been eight years since I graduated and I currently owe over $41,000 due to the accruing interest. Part of the problem is that I graduated with degrees in Theatre and Creative Writing and have been unable to earn any income in my desired fields. I work at a restaurant, similar to many creative types of people, and my annual take home after taxes is somewhere in the ballpark of $25,000. (Of course, what I actually make is closer to $36,000 a year, but the government makes sure to take it’s one-third of my paycheck in taxes.) The point I’m trying to make is not about fairness. I signed the contract and I am doing my best to pay it off, even if it takes me the rest of my life. The point I want to make is that it simply doesn’t have to be this way. At the end of 2019, the federal debt was just under twenty-three trillion dollars. The entirety of student loan debt is around one and a half trillion. If the Fed can print three trillion dollars in stimulus money in response to Covid-19, then they can take on the student loan debt as well and free us all from this burden. Or think about all of the biggest corporations in the country, like Amazon, Apple, and Walmart. None of these companies pay taxes to our government. If they did, that money would be more than enough to cover the cost of college for everyone, in addition to probably funding health care for all. Or that money could go towards social projects for underserved communities. But the government and Big Business have made their deals and they continue to get richer while the rest of us simply try to remove the boot of debt from our financial necks.All of these nefarious practices started in the aftermath of the Second World War. With Europe in ruins, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the two big powers on the planet and the Cold War was under way. All of a sudden it was capitalism vs. communism in every facet of life, in every corner of the globe, and thus our economic hit men were born. The United States used its propaganda machine to instill a fear of communism in its people and to justify its capitalistic pressures on the rest of the developing world. In Ecuador, for example, they wanted to exploit the people for their oil supply. They got the contracts signed, the power plants built, the oil exported, and all the while kept the country in debt and its people in poverty. That is just one of dozens of examples.If a country’s leader refused to sign these contracts, they were forcibly removed. This happened in Panama when the CIA assassinated their democratically elected president Omar Torrijos in 1981 so they could take control of the Panama Canal and profit off the shipping shortcut. They put a dictator in charge, and when that guy didn’t work out, the US Air Force bombed Panama City, kidnapped the new president, and the CIA imprisoned him in America. They put yet another guy in charge, and have continually gone to drastic measures in order to keep control of the canal and profit off the shipping route. Meanwhile the people of Panama remain in penury. This same tactic was most recently seen with the execution of Saddam Hussein. The governmental propaganda machine targeted Muslims and stoked people’s fear of Islamic terrorism emanating from the Middle East. However, the real truth is that Hussein was not cooperating with the political demands of the United States. So we had him removed from power.For further examples, in 1954 the CIA assassinated Guatemala’s democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz. In 1973 they assassinated Chile’s democratically elected president Salvador Allende. They got Jaime Roldòs, president of Ecuador, in 1981. The list goes on and on, including Haiti, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, and Honduras in the Western Hemisphere. It also includes Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and more. The Presidents who managed to keep their lives became pawns on the global economic chessboard, the kings of which are the aforementioned conglomerate of international corporations, international banks, and governmental organizations.While all of these forces used to predominantly be at play internationally, they have more recently come home to infect the United States. The poorest amongst us are oppressed by any and all forms of debt, including student loans, medical bills, credit cards and more. Whereas once upon a time communism used to be our common “enemy,” that has now been shifted to terrorist groups in the Middle East. The most powerful people in the country rotate through different positions in government, business, and banking. Robert McNamara is the perfect example. He started his career at Ford Motor Company in the 1940s and eventually rose to become its president in 1960. From there he transitioned to Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy and played a major role in the US involvement in the Vietnam War. He then transitioned again and served as the president of the World Bank for thirteen years. You can clearly see that he was able to convince his friends in the government to give his friends in business tax breaks. You can see how he would be inclined to give his friends low interest rates on loans from the World Bank. He is one small example of a system that rewards those on the inside track and ignores those on the outside.What we are left with is what Perkins describes as a death economy and he ends his book by advocating for a global change of consciousness. We need to move away from the practices of corporate greed and towards a new philosophy of compassion, humility, and generosity. He writes: “It isn’t about changing the mechanics of economics. It is about changing the ideas, the dogmas that have driven economics for centuries: debt and fear, insufficiency, divide and conquer. It is about moving from ideas about merely being sustainable to ones that include regenerating areas devastated by agriculture, mining, and other destructive activities. It is about revolution. The transition from a death economy to a life economy is truly about a change in consciousness—a consciousness revolution.”

⭐This book for me, was an eye opener and every page were not only instructional but inspirational to the reader. This expose’ started early on with a term entitled: ‘corporatocracy’ – mainly international corporations, banks, rich and the powerful control them. Interestingly, J. Perkins did not use the other similar meaning terms like ‘Cryptocracy’ or ‘Deep State’ the latter term – a lot of us are familiar with nowadays. In a sense, this amazing book puts into perspective the true reality of global economics and the western type of neo-liberal system that tries all sorts of underhand skulduggery methods including corruption just to gain profit. Much of Perkins viewpoint expressed in the book tend to reflect the works covered by Noam Chomsky in previous decades.Perkins uses the term: ‘death economy’ which is very apt in describing the destructive nature of global corporations’ policies that strive to push their unending pursuance of profit at all costs that ultimately means destroying many nation states and eliminating their democratically elected leaders. He (Perkins) cited many examples of this including the initial and perceived fears/threats to his own life when he thought of writing and publishing this book.To summarise, a very enlightening book that explains how America really took over the world through economic methods of ‘giving’ foreign aid, trade, financial trickery, targeted business investment, espionage, assassination, bribery, intimidation and ultimately through military (force) invasion(s). Perkins sets the scene very early on and mentions what retired U.S. General Wesley Clark said about a US government classified memo saying: “invading 7 countries in 5 years” from which many can gather on what has already happened in the preceding decades and this clearly points that the “real enemies of this planet are not the Russians nor the ‘terrorist’ Muslims”. And, the real terrorists emerge from the shadows from the cryptocracy or the deep state into the spotlight.Excellent book and a very high recommendation to buy this book that suggests the possible ways forward on what you can do and things to do – to challenge the status quo! The book should be read in conjunction with the 2005 book by R. W. Baker: “Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money”.

⭐I like the manner the confessor describes how he got hooked into this dirty game of exploitation that nearly made him lose his humanity.

⭐In my heart, I knew this kind of corruption was how the world worked but I never really had any hard facts or true understanding and it all felt a bit “conspiracy theory”. John Perkins has not filled in those theoretical blanks and anyone who thinks they really understand politics, corporates, global finance or even just life, is an idiot until they read this. I read the preface and was hooked. For anyone who wants to know how to escape the hamster wheel of life – read this and educate yourself…….

⭐Every page was not only instructional but also a source of inspirationBut as the saying goes ‘what doesn’t kill you – makes you stronger, but first it will piss you off – beyond belief!’Magnificent exposeWe don’t have future if we continue to do nothing -And it will take everything to eliminate death economy – or this very destructive model will kill us sooner than we’d like

⭐The book has lots of words but says nothing.Probably could have been written in 1 page summarised with:I got a job, met some global leaders and over inflated some numbers to send some money to a country.Became a millionaire and now hates the capitalist system that made him rich because some how its now really bad. A wet dream for any woke socialist with zero substance.The book mostly just talks about history with no relation or relevance to his dodgy numbers that he wrote once.To give an example since the chap went in and gave his dodgy numbers to Indonesia the gdp of the country has risen circa 10 folds and currently currently debt levels to gdp are under 40%Final remark is a actually think he knows a lot more then he let’s on as in tbe story was probably alot more juicier. That’s the only justification I can think of for his paranoia that somehow someone is going top him.I read the whole book but it’s not a re read for me

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