Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins
(The Penguin Group, 2006).
The life story of a now 60-ish successful businessman who dedicated his talent at understanding foreign cultures to large bogus "consulting" firms throughout the 1970s and 80s.
His theory is that firms such as those for whom he worked -and their accomplices in the international construction industry- are responsible for the misery of most of what is still called the Third World. By having drafted dozens of fake growth-expectation sheets with no other goal than to sell huge amounts of useful but outrageously expensive infrastructure to the poorest countries in the world, John Perkins confesses to having made a living out of the creation of debts from which he knew Ecuador, Panama, and Indonesia (to name only a few) would never recover.
According to Perkins, it is by entrapping these countries into such debt that the United States has created a satellite of docile servants (to be qualified as allies, they would have to be treated as equals). Unable to repay what they owe in cash, these countries are eventually forced to tender their pound of flesh in the form of political favours or mouthshutting. Johns Perkins knows -he was an EHM (economic hit man), responsible for trapping these nations.
Probably the most important feature of the book is the way in which Perkins shows that there is no conspiracy behind the production of this generalized subjection. The reason why there is no conspiracy (apart from the fact that tremendous technical difficulties make any conspiracy very unlikely) is that there is no need for one. People need jobs; Perkins' was interesting, and it was well paid; add enough young professionals like him to one-another and you will quickly see a great many innocent consultants producing not so innocent outcomes. All that glitters (his career certainly did) is not gold.
Having taught at Harvard University and been cited as one of the prime political consultants of the last quarter century, the author goes back to his late teenagehood and early twenties to explain why his career should not be interpreted as anything but a bubble of lies and cosmetic achievements. Holding nothing but a BBA (bachelor's in business administration) from Boston University, the only thing that allowed him to climb up the ladder of success -the author writes- was his agreement to produce the numbers that were asked of him, be it through the elaboration of econometric lies and inaccuracies.
Perkins' writing is often repetitive and at times too lyrical, but his argument is strong and it would take serious denial to ignore the fact that the author is speaking at least some truth.
Read more at: http://whatyoumustread.blogspot.com/
Buy at Amazon.com or Amazon.de
- 1
April 10, 2008
ilyas m mohsin, ppp, Platinum Contributor (253)
Perkins must be a great human being to feel such guilt which gets widely proliferated by the day. His credentials include a stint at Harvard Univ which is embarrassing as one would associate only very high quality erudition with that august institution.
The third world must acknowledge Perkins as a hero for unmasking the facade of development loans. While the US etc achieve their hidden agenda through such exploitation, the victims are sinking in to deeper economic morass by the day. This may be a major factor but they also have inherent policy/ planning and institutional defects of their own which can be properly addressed by themselves, may be with honest outside help. The latter may be difficult to find but is not totally non-existent.
I suggest that AC may conduct a poll to assess the reaction of the people to the disclosure of such con-business at the donors level.