The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

By John Perkins

Quick Summary

An updated and expanded edition of John Perkins's controversial memoir exposing the practices of "economic hit men" -- consultants who, Perkins claims, use fraudulent financial projections, rigged elections, bribery, extortion, and even assassination to enrich American corporations and advance US geopolitical interests at the expense of developing nations. The "New Confessions" extends the original 2004 narrative to cover post-2008 developments, including how these same predatory practices have increasingly been turned inward against American and European citizens through austerity, privatization, and corporate capture of democratic institutions.

Categories

• Macro & Economics
• Geopolitics

Detailed Summary

"The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2016) by John Perkins is a 383-page updated edition of his 2004 bestseller. Perkins, a former chief economist at the consulting firm Chas. T. Main, presents a first-person account of what he describes as a systematic pattern of economic exploitation carried out by a network he calls the "corporatocracy" -- the alliance of major corporations, international banks, and government agencies.

Part I: The Original Confessions (1963-2004) retells Perkins's account of being recruited by the National Security Agency and trained to serve as an "economic hit man" (EHM). His job, as he describes it, was to travel to developing countries and produce grossly inflated economic growth projections that would justify massive infrastructure loans from the World Bank and other international institutions. These loans were designed to be so large that the debtor country could never repay them, creating a dependency that could be leveraged for political and economic concessions -- access to natural resources, military bases, UN votes, and privatization of state assets. Countries that accepted the loans enriched a small domestic elite and American engineering firms while saddling the general population with unpayable debt.

Perkins describes specific case studies in Indonesia, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Colombia, and other nations. When EHMs failed to persuade a leader to cooperate, the next step was sending "jackals" -- CIA operatives or their proxies -- to engineer coups, assassinations, or other regime changes. Perkins claims the deaths of Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos and Panamanian President Omar Torrijos were jackals' work. When jackals also failed, the US military was deployed, as in Iraq.

Part II: The New Confessions (2004-2016) extends the narrative to demonstrate how EHM tactics have evolved and expanded. Perkins argues that after the 2008 financial crisis, the same playbook used against developing nations was turned against Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Iceland -- with the IMF and European Central Bank imposing austerity conditions that transferred wealth from citizens to banks. He draws parallels between structural adjustment programs imposed on Latin America in the 1980s and austerity programs imposed on European nations after 2008.

Perkins also describes the expansion of EHM activities to include: the exploitation of fear after 9/11 to expand surveillance and military spending; the use of free trade agreements to undermine labor and environmental protections; the privatization of public services (water, prisons, education) as a wealth transfer mechanism; and the corruption of the US political system through lobbying and campaign finance. He endorses Yanis Varoufakis's characterization of the European debt crisis as an EHM operation.

Part III: A New Vision calls for a transition from what Perkins calls a "death economy" (extractive, exploitative, focused on short-term profits) to a "life economy" (regenerative, equitable, focused on long-term sustainability). He profiles businesses and organizations that are creating alternative models and argues that consumer and investor choices can drive systemic change.

The book has been both praised for its courage and criticized for unverifiable claims and conspiratorial framing. Regardless of one's assessment of Perkins's specific claims, the book provides a provocative lens for understanding how international financial institutions, sovereign debt, and corporate influence interact in ways that can harm developing nations and undermine democratic governance.