P.G. Smith Author

Hello Readers,

I hope you had a happy holiday. As promised, here is my review of ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man‘ by John Perkins. I strongly recommend the 3rd edition (even if you read the first or second) because this is not fiction, history marches on, and the author has added crucial chapters to update our understanding of current world political economics.

This is such a good book. I wish everyone in the world (and especially America) would read it. It’s very well written; much of it reads like a spy novel. So, if you like gripping memoirs, this book is for you. But it’s so much more than that. It’s packed with (often shocking) information, an on-the-scene account of global economic manipulation written by a participant. This is an inside story of what we did in Iran, Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Columbia, and elsewhere to secure American corporate profits, and insure them in perpetuity by pushing poor countries into a debilitating cycle of debt. Colonialism by indebtedness.

This was our pitch: ‘If you want to prosper, we can loan you money (World Bank, IMF) using your natural resources as collateral, but you have to hire our companies to build your infrastructure and submit to neoliberal policies. This is the road to wealth.’ But just as Spain, Belgium, Britain and all the other colonizing countries got rich while their colonies languished, so American corporations got rich while our ‘trading partners’ sunk hopelessly further in debt to us, their resources depleted and polluted, and their population more desperate. These countries don’t like us anymore. This book doesn’t just explain why; it paints a shocking picture of what we did.

In the 21st century, America is being challenged (and perhaps eclipsed) by China, which can play on American exploitation to make a pitch of their own: ‘If you want your country to prosper, accept China as a trading partner that will not interfere with your government, and we can loan you money using your natural resources as collateral, but you must hire our companies to build the infrastructure you need to make this progress.’ Different phrasing but basically the same pitch, and China’s deals are turning out no better for the indebted countries than ours did.

Perkins warns that China and America are both being short sighted. Short term profit at someone else’s expense can no longer be a viable goal. The world is now too small, the economy too interconnected, the ecology too overwhelmed. This he calls a Death Economy. In order to rid ourselves of it, we have to change the way we think, our basic perceptions. We must give up old notions of domination, exploitation, and wastefulness. This basic attitude must be replaced to produce a Life Economy based on global cooperation.

It’s a fine goal and he does offer some suggestions as to how to head in that direction. You should read this book. It’s enjoyable, shocking, discouraging, infuriating, and true. That’s got to be worth a lot.