Book Description
Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston
strategic-consulting firm, confesses 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.
Amazon.com
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
911 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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