I first heard of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (EHM) on Democracy NOW!, when the author, John Perkins, was being interviewed by Amy Goodman about it. He was explaining that he watched the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and realized that most Americans just didn't know what has been done on the international stage in their name. He wrote the book to tell the story, despite the fact there are lots of people who didn't want him to. He knows about it because he was one of the people that milked every opportunity for whatever it was worth, leaving behind a string of bankrupt governments and polluted landscapes. I got all that from the radio, and thought no more about it. Then my old friend the TDM loaned me his copy, saying "it reads like a good novel." Once I started I had trouble putting the thing down.

The story begins in New England, where he was trained to say whatever it took to land lucrative contracts for the consulting company he worked for (MAIN) building infrastructure for developing countries. They would then subcontract to the many engineering firms like Bechtel that did the actual work of building electric power plants and the like. He did this knowing full well that paying for the resulting oversized equipment would surely bankrupt the national treasury, making the country a financial slave of the World Bank and its friends.

He goes through this process many times, in places like Indonesia, Columbia, and Iran. Then after the oil shocks of the 1970s, he worked on a project to repatriate those petrodollars by rebuilding Saudi Arabia. Over and over during the course of the book he discusses his feelings about the net impact of what he was doing. Sometimes he even allows a particularly talented politician like Omar Torrijos to talk him out of projecting wildly optimistic numbers, despite the grumbling from his management this caused. By the end of the story, it is clear the guy caused more grief with his reports than just about any mass murderer I ever heard of did with a gun.

To his credit, the author was bothered enough by what he was doing to quit the field. He ends the book by explaining that yes, the story is old but the issues raised are politically significant and will continue to be so. He looks at what companies like Nike are doing, making shoes in third world sweatshops, as a continuation of that work. He thinks of the 2nd Bush Presidency in the same vein. He explains that people go along with it for many reasons. The patterns of abuse are so simple and easy to understand I almost think that a widespread understanding of how they work will go a long way towards preventing them from working. Reading this book can certainly help with that.

Tian Harter

Here is an excerpt that I particularly think tells the story:

I talked to a woman who also liked the book. She said "Now I know where all that third world debt came from."