Confessions of an Economic Hit Man John Perkins Hardcover: 264 pages, Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (November 9, 2004), ISBN: 1576753018




Imagine a wide-reaching global economic empire that has for decades stretched to all four corners of the planet and consumed in its machinations the lives and livelihoods of millions of persons in far-off lands.

This is the backdrop for John Perkins' autobiographical account of his erstwhile profession in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, published in 2004.

In the opening of the book, which Perkins says he began writing in 1982 but could not publish for two decades because of threats from some of those implicated, he explains the role of an economic hit man 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."

As the plot unfurls, the reader is hurled into a James Bond-esque world of seduction, intrigue and power, where the leaders of impoverished developing countries fall like so many dominoes into the grasp of the global "corporatocracy" - Perkins' term for the nefarious alliance between corporations and international financial institutions that seek to control the forces behind globalization.

"Words like democracy, socialism, and capitalism were becoming almost obsolete. Corporatocracy had become a fact, and it increasingly exerted itself as the single major influence on world economics and politics." --From Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins

The consequences for not taking part in this deadly tango with the "corporatocracy" are dire, Perkins writes, and he cites examples from his career where CIA "jackals" were sent in to finish off a job where the economic hit men had failed. Among the proported casualties were two Latin American leaders who in the 1970s met their end in fiery plane crashes after they refused to allow their countries to be shackled to escalating foreign debt.

Ultimately, Perkins maintains his aim in writing Confessions was to come clean on his small role in what he sees as a larger corrupt corporatocracy. In an epilogue to the 2006 edition of the book, he invites readers to analyze their own interactions with this system and question how they can make changes in their lives to stop perpetuating the exploitation he claims it engenders.

Born into a middle-class, staunchly Republcan New England family in 1945, Perkins began his meteoric career path with a National Security Agency (NSA) interview that he believes was a screening process that led him to later fulfill a number of roles with different firms involved in international development and energy consultancy. After a stint with the Peace Corps in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Perkins was hired in 1971 by Chas. T. Main, an international firm of engineering and construction consultants. Over the next decade at Main, Perkins held the titles of Chief Economist and Manager of Economics and Regional Planning, but he contends he was simultaneously fulfilling the more sinister job description of an economic hit man.

Over the ensuing years, Perkins claims he was involved in a string of high-level con jobs in countries from Southeast Asia to Latin America to the Middle East, in which his company and government agencies were complicit. In each new situation, we see Perkins' interior struggle with the type of life he chose, and ultimately eschewed.

Responding to the popularity of Confessions, the U.S. Department of State published a rebuttal¹ on its website, where it brushes off as "total fantasy" Perkins' claims that U.S. government agencies were influential in facilitating his career path. The NSA's purview is limited to cryptological - the creating and cracking of codes - activities, and it is not an economic organization, according to the State Department. The rebuttal goes on to say that, far from indebting foreign nations, the U.S. government seeks to "reduce the debt burden for the most heavily indebted poor countries."

"...[T]here were two primary objectives of my work. First, I was to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back to MAIN and other U.S. companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone & Webster, and Brown & Root) through massive engineering and construction projects. Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received these loans (after they had paid MAIN and the other U.S. contractors, of course) so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors, and so they would present easy targets when we needed favors, including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources." --From Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins

Perkins' contentions in Confessions have also drawn fire from some respected economic reporters.

After appearing together with Perkins on a radio interview, the Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby, for instance, called him "a frothing conspiracy theorist, a vainglorious peddler of nonsense." According to Mallaby, the "corporatocracy" Perkins describes in Confessions "is neither evil nor omnipotent," and he goes on to cite gains made in recent decades by the impoverished of developing nations in the indices of greater life expectancy, decreased infant mortality and increased adult literacy.

At the end of the day, it is up to the reader to decide whether Perkins' Confessions offer a legitimate account of a global "corporatocracy" looming behind the scenes of globalization, or whether it is merely a well-written and compelling conspiracy theory. Either way, it makes for an enjoyable read.

An unlikely book reviewer, the U.S. State Department admits that while it disagrees with Perkins' claims to government dabbling in his career, Confessions does put forward thought-provoking questions into the state of globalization today: "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which Perkins says has been translated into some 20 languages, is popular because it is an exciting, first-person, cloak-and-dagger tale that plays to popular images about alleged U.S. economic exploitation of Third World countries. Perkins raises legitimate questions about the impacts of economic growth and modernization on developing countries and indigenous peoples."²

For more information, see: www.economichitman.com.

¹ http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2006/Feb/02-767147.html
² Ibid.




Conor Fortune is a freelance journalist and former Rotary World Peace Fellow who currently lives in New York.

To read another Global Envision Book review that discusses America's role in the developing world, see The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government.



Click the icon to buy this book from Amazon.com. A portion of your proceeds will go to support Global Envision.

Return to top