RPCV John Perkins details his Main job selling overrated economic forecasts to third-world countries in exchange for lucrative contracts to his company and hefty bonuses for his own pocket
CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN
By John Perkins
Berrett-Koehler Publications
250 pages, $24.95
Find a poor country in a strategic spot, preferably sitting on top lots of oil or ripe for a U.S. military base. Convince the country's rulers it will help their economy to take out hefty American-backed loans to build electric utilities, dams and other infrastructure. Reassure the rulers they'll stay in power and get rich as long as U.S. companies are hired to do the construction. Use whatever means necessary to convince them; extortion, sex, faked financial reports. To pay back the loans, the leaders must use a big chunk of their nation's revenues to the detriment of the health, education and welfare of their own people.
That, in a nutshell, is the life of an EHM, or Economic Hit Man, a man like John Perkins. Perkins spent two decades working as an economist in Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia and Iran for Chas T. Main, Inc., a contemporary engineering firm of giants such as Bechtel and Haliburton. In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Perkins describes his insider involvement with some of the darker deals of the United States, such as brokering the Saudi Arabia money- laundering deal which he says sealed the relationship between the fundamentalist Muslim House of Saud and our government. EHMs operate beneath the radar screen of even Congressional oversight, Perkins notes.
If the rulers don't toe the line for the good of American companies, as happened in Panama, Ecuador, Iran and Venezuela, American-trained assassins are sent in to take them out and put in governments favorable to American interests, Perkins writes. If all else fails, the U.S. military is sent in after convincing American people and soldiers it is necessary to prevent a Communist takeover or ferret out terrorists or save people with democracy.
A former Peace Corps worker, Perkins details his Main job selling overrated economic forecasts to third-world countries in exchange for lucrative contracts to his company and hefty bonuses for his own pocket. He watched as men he admired and dealt with, such as Panama's democratically elected Omar Torrijos, die in suspicious accidents to be replaced by pro-American governments. Plagued by guilt for much of the time, Perkins admits he still didn't easily walk away from the power and money of his position.
Perkins follows the paths of many of America's powerbrokers from their CEO days to the their current positions in the White House. The threads in between link the National Security Agency, the U.S. Army and the CIA to some of the companies still raking in billions of dollars on government contracts.
Perkins work must have intrigued plenty of readers after he was interviewed on National Public Radio last fall. Afterward it was impossible to find a copy of his book on Amazon.com or Santa Fe bookstores until January.
It would be comforting to think Perkins' book was a quaint bit of intrigue written by a half-decent storyteller. But Perkins is no dreamy-eyed idealist. He could be a poster boy for the American dream. He ostensibly made millions as an EHM, then founded a successful alternative energy company and created a non-profit organization. Perkins backs up his own insider views with plenty of news stories and book excerpts from other writers. Ultimately what he says is nothing new: corporations and bottom lines, not democracy, are running our country.
But Perkins doesn't lay all the blame on the current administration. It's been happening under presidents from both major parties since the Cold War ended. It isn't even a conspiracy, Perkins says.
It is simply a market system doing what it was designed to do: reward those who have power, money and connections. Trace the history of our government's decisions since the 1950s and it makes an almost logical beeline for the mess we are in today both at home and abroad.
Perkins' most important point to Americans is this: Changing the leadership in November wouldn't have changed a thing. The system, and the large corporations now largely in control of it, would still be the same.
"It would be great if we could just blame it all on a conspiracy, but we cannot," he writes. "The empire depends on the efficacy of big banks, corporations, and governments -- the corporatocracy -- but it is not a conspiracy. This corporatocracy is ourselves -- we make it happen. We would rather glimpse conspirators lurking in the shadows because most of us work for one of those banks, corporations or governments or in some way are dependent on them for the goods and services they produce and market. We cannot bring ourselves to bite the hand of the master who feeds us."
Or stop driving our oil-dependent cars.
And if anyone wonder's about our government's next move, read the book. Iran has been in the target sights for a while.
This is a book that should be read by every American who still believes in what the impossible dream of democracy. It should be read by every Republican and Democrat, no matter who they voted for in November. And then, as Perkins challenges readers in the book's epilogue, it is up to us to make changes.
Staci Matlock
Matlock is a reporter for The New Mexican.
