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"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"
By Joan Brunwasser (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Joan Brunwasser - Writer
Fairly recently, I started listening to books on tape while driving. I figured I needed a break from all the heavy stuff I do in my "free time," and listening to the news did not fit the bill. The process is pretty painless I go regularly to my local library to get a stack of discs and leave them in my car so that I can listen while driving between work, carpool, and errands. I've succeeded in spending a lot of pleasant moments with my new "friends," particularly Bill Bryson, Julia Child, and Peter Mayle. This has done wonders in leavening my spirits. But lately, for some reason, I have been drawn to heavier material. It started with Blindsided by Richard Cohen, about his life with MS. Now, it's Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. This book is my every nightmare come true. When I speak about it, the first thing most people ask is, "It's fiction, right?" Wrong. And, I'm more sorry about that than I can say.
I can't wait to finish it, and yet I'm fascinated in the ghoulish way that people pick at their scabs, or slow down on the highway to gaze at an accident scene. This book exposes the underbelly of American foreign policy and makes me understand in a very visceral way why so much of the world thinks poorly of us, to put it delicately. This type of behavior did not just begin when W took office. While I wish I could blame the whole thing on him, it predates his presidency by quite a bit and did not limit itself to one party or the other.
Most of the time, the average person doesn't know much about the things I want to talk about voting machines, supposed "glitches," HAVA, various secretaries of state, elected officials and local boards of elections doing amazingly egregious things. If anything on this topic makes its way to the mainstream media, it's generally hidden on an inner page somewhere or it's slanted in such a way that you'd swear it's not even the same story that appeared on the Web. Things have started to change of late, but it's been a long hard slog for those of us trying to break through.
This book is more bad news, big time, on an entirely different front. But to my surprise, when I've wanted to talk about it, people had either heard of the book or had no problem believing its basic premise. I find that heartening, in a way. I highly recommend that you read this book, as knowledge is the first step to action. We need to know what our government is doing in our name. And, if we object, which I suspect the majority of us do, we need to demand an accounting and a change of course. It's as simple as that.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I admit that I have not finished the book yet. I'm in the middle of the seventh of eight CDs. But I have a burning need to get this up and out. I already know that Perkins has left his evil ways behind and is doing what he can to atone for his past behavior. Besides, this isn't a review in the typical New York Times manner, nor has it any pretensions to be. It's more of a modest, "This is something I think is worth reading, and here's why."
John Perkins worked for private company Chas. T. Main from 1971-1981. His assignment formed a little understood, but critical, arm of the government and its foreign policy. Initially recruited by the N.S.A., "the nation's largest and least understood spy organization," his status as chief economist cloaked the project with maximum government deniability. The concept of "economic hit man" was based on the early '50s success of the C.I.A.'s Kermit Roosevelt in toppling the democratically elected leader of Iran in order to install the more amenable Shah.
So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government...If I hadn't lived this life as an economic hit man, I think I'd have a hard time believing that anybody does these things. And that's why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change.
That is the goal of my review as well.
Perkins outlines the American thirst for globalization, privatization and what he terms "corporatocracy" in its quest for global empire. The old adage, "What's good for GM is good for America" has become both a narrower and a broader concept. What's good for a few, very large corporations and private consulting firms Bechtel, Halliburton, and others that are not household names drives American foreign policy, and benefits only its ultra-rich citizens. Ethics, social conscience, and the social welfare of the countries we seek to plunder, corrupt, and ensnare play no part in the equation. The cost to them, and to the world as a whole, is as unforeseen and disregarded as it is onerous.
I'll try to concisely describe the three prongs used in implementing this policy. The first is the "chief economist" (actually, not a trained economist at all) Perkins, who was dispatched to whatever third world country had something America wanted oil, natural resources, or strategic geographic location (like Panama). His instructions were to spend several months in the country, getting to know the lay of the land, and to then craft a proposal that included grossly inflated projections regarding the benefits of building specific infrastructure, like a power plant or oil pipelines. The multi-million or -billion dollar contract cost would be covered by loans by the ever-ready and complicit I.M.F. and World Bank. All work would be channeled through American firms, who would supply the plans and labor, thereby receiving mammoth contracts and huge profits.
The way the loan agreement was written made it impossible for the country to keep up with payments, leading to its defaulting on the loan. The American companies had already received their funds when the loan was made, putting the ensnared country in a lose-lose situation. They had saddled their population with debt for generations to come, had only further enriched a tiny crust of the local elite, and now, their sizable debt left them beholden to America. They could only repay it by becoming America's puppet, through various key U.N. votes, or allowing us to take over their coveted natural resources.
In order to achieve this domination, there were back-up plans if the economic hit man's salesmanship wasn't sufficiently persuasive. The next step involved calling in the "jackals" to foment civil unrest, either via general strikes or a coup. If these methods of "gentle persuasion" were unsuccessful, fatal accidents could always be arranged. Perkins cites Ecuador's Jaime Roldos and Panama's Omar Torrijos as paying the ultimate cost of standing up to American demands. If even the jackals couldn't bring about the desired results, it was time to bring in American troops. Does anyone remember the invasion of Panama in 1989? Understood within this context, it takes on much more ominous overtones. The world roundly condemned our actions. The American press blackout that prevented on-the-ground coverage during the invasion, not to mention outside criticism, presaged the muzzle that W has used so effectively this time around.
Perkins wants us to grasp the way this philosophy of global empire has taken over our foreign policy, and understands the war in Iraq within this context. Saddam Hussein was intended to be another example of the prototype used in Saudi Arabia, America's biggest, yet untold, success story. Building all of those cities from scratch in the desert did more than rake in billions of dollars for private contractors. It cemented a relationship between the two countries that pictures of W and Saudi leaders holding hands only hint at. It's not only oil that brought us to Iraq, according to Perkins. It's the presence of water, a big issue in the Middle East, as well as Iraq's strategic geographic location. It's been said that whoever controls Iraq controls the Middle East. Perkins buys into that theory, and in the coming months, we will see how the story plays out.
Here is Perkins explaining what happened if he failed at his job. This is from an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251
Referring to the fates of Roldos and Torrijos, Perkins says:
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