Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Totally Explained

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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (ISBN 0-452-28708-1) is a book written by John Perkins and published in 2004. It tells the story of his career with consulting firm Chas. T. Main. Before employment with the firm, he interviewed for a job with the National Security Agency (NSA). Perkins claims that this interview effectively constituted an independent screening which led to his subsequent hiring by Einar Greve, a member of the firm (and alleged NSA liaison) to become a self-described "Economic Hit Man."

Content

According to his book, Perkins' function was to convince the political and financial leadership of underdeveloped countries to accept enormous development loans from institutions like the World Bank and USAID. Saddled with huge debts they couldn't hope to pay, these countries were forced to acquiesce to political pressure from the United States on a variety of issues. Perkins argues in his book that developing nations were effectively neutralized politically, had their wealth gaps driven wider and economies crippled in the long run. In this capacity Perkins recounts his meetings with some prominent individuals, including Graham Greene and Omar Torrijos. Perkins describes the role of an EHM as follows:

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.

The epilogue to the 2006 edition provides a rebuttal to the current move by the G8 nations to forgive Third World debt. Perkins charges that the proposed conditions for this debt forgiveness require countries to sell their health, education, electric, water and other public services to corporations. Those countries would also have to discontinue subsidies and trade restrictions that support local business, but accept the continued subsidization of certain G8 businesses by the US and other G8 countries, and the erection of trade barriers on imports that threaten G8 industries. Recent events in Bolivia and Tanzania are cited as examples of the effects of these proposed conditions.

Controversy and criticism

Perkins's first boss at Chas. T. Main, Einar Greve, initially declared to journalists that "basically [Perkins's] story is true" and that "what John's book says is, there was a conspiracy to put all these countries on the hook, and that happened." (External Link

) Subsequently, he denied Perkins's allegation that he ever worked as a liaison with the NSA and contradicted other claims made in Perkins's book, stating that Perkins "has convinced himself that a lot of this stuff is true." Perkins comments on Greve's change of heart in the "Epilogue" of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." He points out that Greve initially supported the truth of the book, only to switch his opinion several months later. Perkins suggests that Greve was pressured by outside forces to denounce the book as false.
Some of the book's critics have questioned whether Perkins makes a significant contribution to the debate on global finance and the development of the Third World. For instance, columnist Mark Engler

of In These Times, has written that "the actual content of Perkins' admissions proves distressingly thin." According to the New York Times, "the book's popularity seems driven more by the mix of cloak-and-dagger atmospherics and Mr. Perkins's Damascene conversion" than by insight into "the larger issue of America's role in emerging economies."
Columnist Sebastian Mallaby

of the Washington Post reacted sharply to Perkins' book: "This man is a frothing conspiracy theorist, a vainglorious peddler of nonsense, and yet his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is a runaway bestseller." Mallaby, who spent 13 years writing for the London Economist and wrote a critically well-received biography of World Bank chief James Wolfensohn,(External Link

) holds that Perkins' conception of international finance is "largely a dream" and that his "basic contentions are flat wrong." Critics, including Sebastian Mallaby and the State Department, have also referred to public remarks Perkins has made, as well as previously published books. His published works include books about South American tribal culture that deal with shamanistic techniques for creating self-empowerment, techniques to enhance health and longevity, as well as first hand accounts of metaphysical "travelling" through visions & dream wanderings.(External Link

) Mark Engler questions Perkins's "New Age leanings," and accuses him of "delving into a type of essentialism that, thankfully, has been long banished from university anthropology departments."
The State Department release refers to a presentation at a bookstore, where Perkins allegedly asserted that the US Government was involved in the assassinations of John and Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon and several US senators who died in plane crashes, and expressed concern regarding alleged inconsistencies in the US investigation of the events surrounding the September 11 attacks of 2001. The State Department release therefore identifies Perkins as a conspiracy theorist. In the book, however, Perkins repeatedly emphasizes that the dynamics he describes are systemic and specifically not the result of conspiracy:

"Although unconscious, deceived, and—in many cases—self-deluded, these players were not members of any clandestine conspiracy; rather, they were the product of a system that promotes the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever witnessed."

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