If they get you, I'll take over where you left off. We need to do this for the grandchildren I hope to give you someday! That is the skeleton version of the long answer; the flesh and blood are added in the chapters that follow. This is a true story. I lived every minute of it. The sights, the people, the conversations, and the feelings I describe were all a part of my life. It is my personal story, and yet it happened within the larger context of world events that have shaped our history, have brought us to where we are today, and form the foundation of our children's futures.
I have made every effort to present these experiences, people, and conversations accurately. Whenever I discuss historical events or re-create conversations with other people, I do so with the help of several tools: published documents; personal records and notes; rec-ollections — my own and those of others who participated; the five manuscripts I began previously; and historical accounts by other authors, most notably recently published ones that disclose infor-mation that formerly was classified or otherwise unavailable.
Refer-ences are provided in the endnotes, to allowT interested readers to pursue these subjects in more depth. In some cases, I combine sev-eral dialogues I had with a person into one conversation to facilitate the flow of the narrative. My publisher asked whether we actually referred to ourselves as economic hit men. I assured him that we did, although usually only by the initials. In fact, on the day in when I began working with my teacher Claudine, she informed me, "My assignment is to mold you into an economic hit man.
No one can know about your in-volvement — not even your wife. Beautiful and intelligent, she was highly effective; she understood my weaknesses and used them to her greatest advantage. Her job and the way she executed it ex-emplify the subtlety of the people behind this system. Claudine pulled no punches when describing what I would be called upon to do.
My job, she said, was "to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire — to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs.
In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. The owmers of U. Executives at our most respected companies hire people at near-slave wages to x Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Preface xi toil under inhuman conditions in Asian sweatshops.
Oil companies wantonly pump toxins into rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants, and committing genocide among ancient cultures. The pharmaceutical industry denies lifesaving medicines to millions of HIV-infected Africans. Twelve million families in our own United States worry about their next meal. The accounting industry creates an Andersen. The income ratio of the one-rifth of the world's population in the wealthiest countries to the one- fifth in the poorest went from 30 to 1 in I to 74 to 1 in Some would blame our current problems on an organized con-spiracy.
I wish it were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits.
This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.
The concept is, of course, erroneous. We know that in many coun-tries economic growth benefits only a small portion of the popula-tion and may in fact result in increasingly desperate circumstances for the majority. This effect is reinforced by the corollary belief that the captains of industry who drive this system should enjoy a special status, a belief that is the root of many of our current problems and is perhaps also the reason why conspiracy theories abound.
When men and women are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupt-ing motivator. When we equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth's resources with a status approaching sainthood, when we teach our children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define huge sections of the population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble.
And we get it. They have brought us to a point where our global culture is a monstrous ma-chine that requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and maintenance, so much so that in the end it will have consumed even-thing in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour itself. The corporatocracy is not a conspiracy, but its members do endorse common values and goals.
One of corporatocracy's most im-portant functions is to perpetuate and continually expand and strengthen the system. The lives of those who "make it," and their accoutrements — their mansions, yachts, and private jets — are pre-sented as models to inspire us all to consume, consume, consume. Every opportunity is taken to convince us that purchasing things is our civiJxluty, that pillaging the earth is good for the economy and therefore serves our higher interests.
People like me are paid out-rageously high salaries to do the system's bidding. If we falter, a more malicious form of hit man, the jackal, steps to the plate. And if the jackal fails, then the job falls to the military. This book is the confession of a man who, back when I was an EHM, was part of a relatively small group. People who play similar roles are more abundant now. They have more euphemistic titles, and they walk the corridors of Monsanto, General Electric, Nike, General Motors, Wal-Mart, and nearly every other major corpora-tion in the world.
In a very real sense, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is their story as well as mine. It is your story too, the story of your world and mine, of the first truly global empire. History tells us that unless we modify this story, it is guaranteed to end tragically. Empires never last. Everyone of them has failed terribly. They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater domination, and then they themselves fall. No country or com-bination of countries can thrive in the long term by exploiting others.
This book was written so that we may take heed and remold our story. I am certain that when enough of us become aware of how we are being exploited by the economic engine that creates an insatiable appetite for the world's resources, and results in systems that foster slavery, we will no longer tolerate it. We will reassess our role in a world where a few swim in riches and the majority drown in poverty, pollution, and violence.
We will commit ourselves to navigating a xii Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Preface xiii course toward compassion, democracy, and social justice for all. Admitting to a problem is the first step toward finding a solution. Confessing a sin is the beginning of redemption. Let this book, then, be the start of our salvation. Let it inspire us to new levels of dedi-cation and drive us to realize our dream of balanced and honorable societies.
Without the many people whose lives I shared and who are de-scribed in the following pages, this book would not have been written. I am grateful for the experiences and the lessons. I am grateful to the many men and women who provided per-sonal insights and information about the multinational banks, international corporations, and political innuendos of various coun-tries, with special thanks to Michael Ben-Eli, Sabrina Bologni, Juan Gabriel Carrasco, Jamie Grant, Paul Shaw, and several others, who wish to remain anonymous but who know who you are.
Once the manuscript was written, Berrett-Koehler founder Steven Piersanti not only had the courage to take me in but also devoted endless hours as a brilliant editor, helping me to frame and reframe the book. My deepest thanks go to Steven, to Richard Perl, who in-troduced me to him, and also to Nova Brown, Randi Fiat, Allen Jones, Chris Lee, Jennifer Liss, Laurie Pellouchoud, and Jenny Williams, who read and critiqued the manuscript; to David Korten, who not only read and critiqued it but also made me jump through hoops to satisfy his high and excellent standards; to Paul Fedorko, my agent; to Valerie Brewster for crafting the book design; and to Todd Manza, my copy editor, a wordsmith and philosopher extraordinaire.
I must thank all those men and women who worked with me at MAIN and were unaware of the roles they played in helping EHM shape the global empire; I especially thank the ones who worked for me and with whom I traveled to distant lands and shared so many precious moments.
Also Ehud Sperling and his staff at Inner Tradi-tions International, publisher of my earlier books on indigenous cul-tures and shamanism, and good friends who set me on this path as an author. I am eternally grateful to the men and women who took me into their homes in the jungles, deserts, and mountains, in the cardboard shacks along the canals of Jakarta, and in the slums of countless cities araund the world, who shared their food and their lives with me and who have been my greatest source of inspiration.
Residents of this city, which was founded long before Columbus arrived in the Americas, are accustomed to seeing snow on the surrounding peaks, despite the fact that they live just a tew miles south of the equator.
The city of Shell, a frontier outpost and military base hacked out of Ecuador's Amazon jungle to service the oil company whose name it bears, is nearly eight thousand feet lower than Quito. To journey from one city to the other, you must travel a road that is both tortuous and breathtaking. Local people will tell you that during the trip you experience all four seasons in a single day.
Although I have driven this road many times, I never tire of the spectacular scenery. Sheer cliff's, punctuated by cascading waterfalls and brilliant bromeliads, rise up one side. On the other side, the earth drops abruptly into a deep abyss where the Pastaza River, a head-water of the Amazon, snakes its way down the Andes.
The Pastaza carries water from the glaciers of Cotopaxi, one of the world s highest active volcanoes and a deity in the time of the Incas, to the Atlantic Ocean over three thousand miles away. In ,1 departed Quito in a Subaru Outback and headed for Shell on a mission that was like no other I had ever accepted. I was hoping to end a war I had helped create. As is the case with so many things we EHMs must take responsibility for, it is a war that is vir-tually unknown anywhere outside the country where it is fought.
I was on my way to meet with the Shuars, the Kichwas, and their neighbors the Achuars, the Zaparos, and the Shiwiars — tribes de-termined to prevent our oil companies from destroying their homes, families, and lands, even if it means they must die in the process. For them, this is a war about the survival of their children and cultures, while for us it is about power, money, and natural resources. It is one part of the struggle for world domination and the dream of a few greedy men, global empire.
We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations sub-servient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop in-frastructure — electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks.
A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco.
Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy the credi-tor , the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years.
When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global empire.
Driving from Quito toward Shell on this sunny day in , I thought back thirty-five years to the first time I arrived in this part of the world. I had read that although Ecuador is only about the size of Nevada, it has more than thirty active volcanoes, over 15 percent of the world's bird species, and thousands of as-yet-unclassified plants, and that it is a land of diverse cultures where nearly as many people speak ancient indigenous languages as speak Spanish.
I found it fascinating and certainly exotic; yet, the words that kept coming to mind back then were pure, untouched, and innocent. Much has changed in thirty-five years. At the time of my first visit in , Texaco had only just discov-ered petroleum in Ecuador's Amazon region. Today, oil accounts for nearly half the country's exports. During this same period, the indigenous cultures began fighting back.
The suit asserts that between and the oil giant dumped into open holes and rivers over four million gallons per day of toxic wastewater contaminated with oil, heavy metals, and carcinogens, and that the company left behind nearly uncovered waste pits that continue to kill both people and animals.
Sweat soaked my shirt, and my stomach began to churn, but not just from the intense trop-ical heat and the serpentine twists in the road. Knowing the part I had played in destroying this beautiful country was once again taking its toll. Because of my fellow EHMs and me, Ecuador is in far worse shape today than she was before we introduced her to the miracles of modern economics, banking, and engineering.
Meanwhile, the share of national resources allocated to the poorest segments of the population declined from 20 to 6 percent. Nearly every country we EHMs have brought under the global empire's umbrella has suf-fered a similar fate. Over half the people in the world survive on less than two dollars per day, which is roughly the same amount they received in the early s.
Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of third world households accounts for 70 to 90 percent of all private financial wealth and real estate ownership in their country; the actual per-centage depends on the specific country. Children ran along beside us, waving and trying to sell us gum and cookies.
Then we left Banos behind. The spectacu-lar scenery ended abruptly as the Subaru sped out of paradise and into a modern vision of Dante's Inferno.
A gigantic monster reared up from the river, a mammoth gray wall. Its dripping concrete was totally out of place, completely un-natural and incompatible with the landscape. Of course, seeing it there stlould not have surprised me. I knew all along that it would be waiting in ambush. I had encountered it many times before and in the past had praised it as a symbol of EHM accomplishments. Even so, it made my skin crawl. That hideous, incongruous wall is a dam that blocks the rushing Pastaza River, diverts its waters through huge tunnels bored into the mountain, and converts the energy to electricity.
This is the megawatt Agoyan hydroelectric project. It fuels the industries that make a handful of Ecuadorian families wealthy, and it has been the source of untold suffering for the farmers and indigenous people who live along the river.
This hydroelectric plant is just one of many projects developed through my efforts and those of other EHMs. Such projects are the reason Ecuador is now a member of the global empire, and the reason why the Shuars and Kichwas and their neighbors threaten war against our oil companies. Because of EHM projects, Ecuador is awash in foreign debt and must devote an inordinate share of its national budget to paying this off, instead of using its capital to help the millions of its citizens officially classified as dangerously impoverished.
The only way Ecua-dor can buy down its foreign obligations is by selling its rain forests to the oil companies. Indeed, one of the reasons the EHMs set their sights on Ecuador in the first place was because the sea of oil beneath its Amazon region is believed to rival the oil fields of the Middle East.
On top of that, Venezuela, our third-largest oil supplier, had recently elected a populist president, Hugo Chavez, who took a strong stand against what he referred to as U. Ecuador is typical of countries around the world that EHMs have brought into the economic- political fold.
Of the remaining S25, three-quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. All of those people — millions in Ecuador, billions around the planet —are potential terrorists. Not because they believe in com-munism or anarchism or are intrinsically evil, but simply because they are desperate. The subtlety of this modern empire building puts the Roman centurions, the Spanish conquistadors, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European colonial powers to shame.
We EHMs are crafty; we learned from history. Today we do not carry swords. We do not wear armor or clothes that set us apart. In countries like Ecuador, Nigeria, and Indonesia, we dress like local schoolteachers and shop owners.
In Washington and Paris, we look like government bureaucrats and bankers. We appear humble, normal. We visit project sites and stroll through impoverished villages. We profess altruism, talk with local papers about the wonderful humanitarian things we are doing. We cover the conference tables of government committees with our spreadsheets and financial projections, and we lecture at the Harvard Business School about the miracles of macroeconomics.
We are on the record, in the open. Or so we portray ourselves and so are we accepted. It is how the system works. We seldom resort to anything illegal because the system itself is built on subterfuge, and the system is by definition legitimate. However — and this is a very large caveat —- if we fail, an even more sinister breed steps in, ones we EHMs refer to as the jackals, men who trace their heritage directly to those earlier empires. The jackals are always there, lurking in the shadows.
When they emerge, heads of state are overthrown or die in violent "accidents. When the jackals fail, young Ameri-cans are sent in to kill and to die. As I passed the monster, that hulking mammoth wall of gray con-crete rising from the river, I was very conscious of the sweat that soaked myclothes and of the tightening in my intestines.
I headed on down intcHhe jungle to meet with the indigenous people wrho are determined to fight to the last man in order to stop this empire I helped create, and I was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt.
How, I asked myself, did a nice kid from rural New Hampshire ever get into such a dirty business? I was an only child, born into the middle class in Both my parents came from three centuries of New England Yankee stock; their strict, moralistic, staunchly Republican attitudes reflected generations of puritanical ancestors.
They were the first in their fam-ilies to attend college — on scholarships. My mother became a high school Latin teacher. When I was born, in Hanover, New Hampshire, he was recuperating from a bro-ken hip in a Texas hospital. I did not see him until I was a year old. He took a job teaching languages at Tilton School, a boys' board-ing school in rural New Hampshire. The campus stood high on a hill, proudly— some would say arrogantly—towering over the town of the same name.
This exclusive institution limited its enrollment to about fifty students in each grade level, nine through twelve. My family was cash starved; however, we most certainly did not see ourselves as poor. Although the school's teachers received very little salary, all our needs were provided free: food, housing, heat, water, and the workers who mowed our lawn and shoveled our snow.
Beginning on my fourth birthday, I ate in the prep school dining 3 room, shagged balls for the soccer teams my dad coached, and handed out towels in the locker room. It is an understatement to say that the teachers and their wives felt superior to the locals. I used to hear my parents joking about be-ing the lords of the manor, ruling over the lowly peasants — the townies.
I knew it was more than a joke. My elementary and middle school friends belonged to that peasant class; they were very- poor.
Their parents were dirt farmers, lumber-jacks, and mill workers. They resented "the preppies on the hill," and in turn, my father and mother discouraged me from socializing with the townie girls, who they called "tarts" and "sluts. I had a hard time understanding my parents' perspective; however, I deferred to their wishes.
Every year we spent the three months of my dad's summer vacation at a lake cottage built by my grandfather in It was surrounded by forests, and at night we could hear owls and mountain lions.
We had no neighbors; I was the only child within walking distance. In the early years, I passed the days by pretending that the trees were knights of the Round Table and damsels in distress named Ann, Priscilla, or Judy depending on the year. My passion was, I had no doubt, as strong as that of Lancelot for Guinevere — and even more secretive. At fourteen, I received free tuition to Tilton School. With my par-ents' prodding, I rejected everything to do with the town and never saw my old friends again.
When my new classmates went home to their mansions and penthouses for vacation, I remained alone on the hill. Their girlfriends were debutantes; I had no girlfriends. All the girls I knew were "sluts"; I had cast them off, and they had forgotten me. I was alone — and terribly frustrated. My parents were masters at manipulation: they assured me that I was privileged to have such an opportunity and that some day I would be grateful. I would find the perfect wife, one suited to our high moral standards.
Inside, though, I seethed. I craved female com-panionship — sex; the idea of a slut was most alluring. However, rather than rebelling, I repressed my rage and expressed my frustration by excelling. I was an honor student, captain of two varsity teams, editor of the school newspaper.
I was determined to show up my rich classmates and to leave Tilton behind forever. Dur-ing my senior year, I was awarded a full athletic scholarship to Brown and an academic scholarship to Middlebury. I chose Brown, mainly because I preferred being an athlete — and because it was located in a city. Middlebury was, in my perception, merely an inflated version of Tilton — albeit in rural Vermont instead of rural New Hampshire.
True, it was coed, but I was poor and most everyone else was wealthy, and I had not attended school with a female in four years. I lacked confidence, felt outclassed, was miserable. I pleaded with my dad to let me drop out or take a year off. I wanted to move to Boston and learn about life and women. He would not hear of it. I have come to understand that life is composed of a series of coincidences.
How we react to these —how we exercise what some refer to as free will — is everything; the choices we make within the boundaries of the twists of fate determine who we are. Two major coincidences that shaped my life occurred at Middlebury. One came in the form of an Iranian, the son of a general who was a personal advisor to the shah; the other was a beautiful young woman named Ann, like my childhood sweetheart.
The first, whom I will call Farhad, had played professional soccer in Rome. He was endowed with an athletic physique, curly black hair, soft walnut eyes, and a background and charisma that made him irresistible to women. He was my opposite in many ways. I worked hard to win his friendship, and he taught me many things that would serve me well in the years to come.
I also met Ann. Al-though she was seriously dating a young man who attended another college, she took me under her wing. Our platonic relationship was the first truly loving one I had ever experienced.
Farhad encouraged me to drink, party, and ignore my parents. I consciously chose to stop studying. I decided I would break my aca-demic leg to get even with my father. My grades plummeted; I lost my scholarship. My father threatened to disown me; Farhad egged me on. I stormed into the dean's office and quit school. It was a pivotal mo-ment in my life.
Farhad and I celebrated my last night in town together at a local bar. A drunken farmer, a giant of a man, accused me of flirting with his wife, picked me up off my feet, and hurled me against a wall. Farhad stepped between us, drew a knife, and slashed the farmer open at the cheek. Then he dragged me across the room and shoved me through a window, out onto a ledge high above Otter Creek.
We jumped and made our way along the river and back to our dorm. The next morning, when interrogated by the campus police, I lied and refused to admit any knowledge of the incident. Nevertheless, Farhad was expelled. We both moved to Boston and shared an apart-ment there.
Later that year, , several of my friends at the newspaper were drafted. I welcomed her attention. She graduated in , while I still had another year to complete at BU. She adamantly refused to move in with me until we were married. Although I joked about being black-mailed, and in fact did resent what I saw as a continuation of my parents' archaic and prudish set of moral standards, I enjoyed our times together and I wanted more.
We married. Ann's father, a brilliant engineer, had masterminded the naviga-tional system for an important class of missile and was rewarded with a high-level position in the Department of the Navy. His best friend, a man Ann called Uncle Frank not his real name , was em-ployed as an executive at the highest echelons of the National Secu-rity Agency NSA , the country's least-known — and by most accounts largest — spy organization. Shortly after our marriage, the military summoned me for my physical.
I passed and therefore faced the prospect of Vietnam upon graduation. The idea of fighting in Southeast Asia tore me apart emotionally, though war has always fascinated me. I was raised on tales about my colonial ancestors — who include Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen — and I had visited all the New England and upstate New York battle sites of both the French and Indian and the Revo-lutionary wars.
I read every historical novel I could find. But as the media exposed the atrocities and the in-consistencies of U. I found myself wondering whose side Paine would have taken. I was sure he would have joined our Vietcong enemies. Uncle Frank came to my rescue. He informed me that an NSA job made one eligible for draft deferment, and he arranged for a series of meetings at his agency, including a day of grueling polygraph-monitored interviews.
I was told that these tests would determine whether I was suitable material for NSA recruitment and training, and if I was, would provide a profile of my strengths and weaknesses, which would be used to map out my career. Given my attitude to-ward the Vietnam War, I was convinced I would fail the tests. Under examination, I admitted that as a loyal American I op-posed the war, and I was surprised when the interviewers did not pursue this subject.
Instead, they focused on my upbringing, my attitudes toward my parents, the emotions generated by the fact I grew up as a poor puritan among so many wealthy, hedonistic prep-pies. According to Perkins, his job at the firm was to convince leaders of underdeveloped countries to accept substantial development loans for large construction. Read as many books as you like Personal use and Join Over We cannot guarantee that every book is.
In all walks of life, we constantly make decisions about whether something is worth our money or our time, or try to convince others to part with their money or their time. Price is the place where value and money meet. From the global release of the latest electronic gadget to the bewildering gyrations of oil futures to markdowns at the bargain store, price is the most powerful and pervasive economic force in our day-to-day lives and one of the least understood.
The heart of this book is a completely new section, over pages long, that exposes the fact that all the EHM and jackal tools—false economics, false promises, threats, bribes, extortion, debt, deception, coups, assassinations, unbridled military power—are used around the world today exponentially more than during the era Perkins exposed over a decade ago.
As dark as the story gets, this reformed EHM also provides hope. Perkins offers specific actions each of us can take to transform what he calls a failing Death Economy into a Life Economy that provides sustainable abundance for all.
DMCA and Copyright : The book is not hosted on our servers, to remove the file please contact the source url. If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to non fiction, economics lovers.
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