April 20, 2006

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
By John Perkins
Plume, 2006
Paperback, 303 pages, $15

Review by TIMOTHY HARRIS
Staff Writer

Since 9/11, Americans have, in that clueless, bewildered way of ours that others find so maddening, asked the question “Why do people hate us so much?” If you still don’t know the answer, read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

While others have better addressed similar issues (David Korten’s When Corporations Rule the World or William Greider’s Secrets of the Temple come to mind), John Perkins takes his history as a foot soldier in the service of empire and makes it read like a John Grisham novel. Books about globalization and economics aren’t for everyone, but Perkins’ is. You can buy his book at Costco.

After almost joining the National Security Agency, Perkins is improbably recruited out of a Peace Corps stint in Ecuador to work for a major economic consulting and engineering firm. Just as improbably, this 20-something kid with an undergraduate business degree is put in charge of projecting economic growth in Indonesia.

He meets a mysterious woman at the Boston Public Library who becomes his mentor. She trains him out of her Beacon Hill apartment, informing him that, if anyone asks, she doesn’t exist. His company has no record of her employment. She tells him he is to be an Economic Hit Man. “We’re a rare breed in a dirty business,” she says. “Once you’re in, you’re in for life.”

The game goes something like this: Developing country gets enormous loan from the World Bank to develop major infrastructure (dams, electric grids, roads, ports, etc.). Bogus economic studies project ridiculous rates of growth, thus justifying said loan. Bundles of money pass from the World Bank through a few sticky hands to land, for the most part, with U.S. firms like Haliburton or Bechtel. Developing nation defaults, as expected, leading to insurmountable debt and surrender of natural resources. Grinding poverty becomes the rule for most while a handful of local elites prevail. Repeat as necessary to achieve empire while generally avoiding war.

Meanwhile, foot soldiers like Perkins globetrot in first class, staying at five-star hotels, running up lavish expense accounts, and drawing comfy executive salaries. Perkins cozies up to elites in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Central and South America, and knows how to keep the money flowing.

He even invents an econometric model, borrowing from an obscure turn of the century Russian mathematician, that involves the assignment of random probabilities. He hires a technician to pad out a theory, vets it through the appropriate conferences and journals, and arrives at a suitably opaque method to project figures few will question.

Perkins knows he’s a sellout but loves being a rich big shot. He enjoys a series of moral awakenings, but always falls a bit short. The bennies are just too good. Perkins forms his own power company during the Wild West of Reagan-era deregulation and, with a little help from his friends, is fabulously successful. His conscience eventually resurfaces and he sells his interest to get serious about The Book. But just as he’s about to spill the beans, global engineering giant Stone & Webster provides a fat sinecure to keep his mouth shut.

With their blessing, Perkins builds a nonprofit to lead New Age tours through the Amazon rain forest on company time. This, he amusingly writes of Stone & Webster, was “consistent with their own commitment to the United Way.” The timeline at the end of his book summarizes this period: “Tries to assuage conscience by writing books about indigenous peoples, supporting non-profit organizations, teaching at New Age forums, traveling to the Amazon and Himalayas, meeting with the Dalai Lama, etc.” Nice work if you can get it.

After 9/11, he finally breaks with his corporate overlords to publish the confession. Perkins knows firsthand why the world hates us. “I had been an heir,” he says, “to those slavers who marched into African jungles and hauled men and women off to waiting ships. Mine had been a more modern approach, subtler… but every bit as sinister.”

This is the well-laid foundation upon which first-world privilege is built. We all get paid to look the other way. Just not quite so well. n