The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

by John Perkins

  Then, almost overnight, China emerged as a new world power. Its meteoric rise as an economic giant and major player in international manufacturing and trade thrust it onto the world stage as that counterbalance.

  China appears to have learned from mistakes made by the United States, its allies, and the corporatocracy. Chinese loans usually are not accompanied by draconian demands — the conditionalities of World Bank and IMF deals — such as voting for specific UN policies, trading only in dollars, or allowing the establishment of military bases occupied by foreign troops. China makes promises that the factories it builds will continue to operate in the long term. It remains to be seen whether such promises will be kept, but the United States promotes “free trade” agreements that do exactly the opposite.

  However, despite China’s apparent aptitude at doing it better than the United States and its allies, the simple fact remains that China is using debt — massive amounts of it — to further its own EHM system, to control countries and their resources.

  Although it is difficult to measure the total amount of debt money flowing from China, estimates are that it committed nearly $100 billion in loans to Ecuador and its Latin American neighbors from 2005 to 2013. Its current loans to the region are perhaps twice that amount and certainly surpass the combined loans of the World Bank, USAID, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Export-Import Bank of the United States. China is the driving force behind the new BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which includes more than fifty member countries. The assets and potential power of these banks dwarf those of the World Bank and all its associated financial institutions. In less than a decade, China has catapulted itself to the position of master of global debt.5

  A New York Times article I read while in Ecuador reported events that sounded like the US EHM activities of my day — except that the Chinese were taking on more projects and spending more money than we ever did.

  Where the Andean foothills dip into the Amazon jungle, nearly 1,000 Chinese engineers and workers have been pouring concrete for a dam and a 15-mile underground tunnel. The $2.2 billion project will feed river water to eight giant Chinese turbines designed to produce enough electricity to light more than a third of Ecuador.

  Near the port of Manta on the Pacific Ocean, Chinese banks are in talks to lend $7 billion for the construction of an oil refinery, which could make Ecuador a global player in gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products.

  Across the country in villages and towns, Chinese money is going to build roads, highways, bridges, hospitals, even a network of surveillance cameras stretching to the Galápagos Islands. State-owned Chinese banks have already put nearly $11 billion into the country, and the Ecuadorean government is asking for more.

  Ecuador, with just 16 million people, has little presence on the global stage. But China’s rapidly expanding footprint here speaks volumes about the changing world order, as Beijing surges forward and Washington gradually loses ground.6

  Our Pachamama Alliance group huddled in a hangar in Shell, waiting for the torrential jungle rain to stop so we could fly into Achuar territory. When I brought up the subject of China, there seemed to be a consensus that China had performed a miracle and should be feared. The country had risen from the ashes of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and, in the years since President Nixon’s first visit in 1972, had enjoyed amazing — “miraculous” — economic growth, like nothing ever before experienced by any country in history. However, this had come at a terrible environmental and social cost. The nation was smothering itself in pollution, and millions of Chinese were living under substandard social conditions. People expressed fear that China was rising to world prominence and that the Chinese model would cause even graver problems than the US model had.

  I’d been to China a couple of times since writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. My last visit had been as a speaker at an MBA conference in Shanghai. Many of the Chinese MBA students who attended were members of the Communist Party and had been singled out as the future leaders of their country. They emphasized that they were very concerned about the environmental and social problems affecting their country, and they were committed to fixing them. One student, Mandy Zhang, insisted that economic growth was proof that China could create an economic miracle. “Now,” she said, “my generation must create a green miracle.”

  One of the Pachamama Alliance people in the hangar asked, “What can we do? How do we stop China?”

  If we are truly honest with ourselves, we in the United States have to admit that it is not so much about stopping China as about changing our own mind-sets. We need to admit that a great deal of China’s pollution is our pollution. The same can be said of the social conditions. We purchase the goods made in those factories. We seek out stores with the lowest prices, but the vast majority of their products are made in the polluting factories of China.

  In a very real sense, China’s economic miracle has been possible only because of the United States — and the global corporations. Key individuals in China have joined the corporatocracy. China is the world’s largest exporter of manufactured goods. From 2001 to 2010, its reported exports increased at an average annual rate of about 20 percent. In 2004, China sold less than $200 billion worth of products to the United States; by 2014, that figure had more than doubled, to $467 billion.7

  Instead of speculating about China, we must repent and reform. We need to take a long, hard look at what we in the United States — and our corporations, now gone global — have done. China is trying to emulate a system that is a failure. If less than 5 percent of the world’s population (living in the United States) is consuming more than 25 percent of the resources, how can 19 percent of the world’s population (living in China) hope to replicate our lifestyle? It’s certainly not possible to also add India, Brazil, and the rest of the world to that equation. We must change.

  We in the United States and across the globe must stop using “them” as scapegoats. Just as we must not fear “them,” we must not blame “them” or expect “them” to solve the problem — the global problem of predatory corporate capitalism, a death economy. We need to recognize that “they” are us. We ourselves — each and every one of us — must take responsibility. We must create a new model — one that the Chinese, the Brazilians, the Indians, our own president, our corporate and government leaders, and everyone else can follow.

  It isn’t about changing the mechanics of economics. It is about changing the ideas, the dogmas that have driven economics for centuries: debt and fear, insufficiency, divide and conquer. It is about moving from ideas about merely being sustainable to ones that include regenerating areas devastated by agriculture, mining, and other destructive activities. It is about revolution. The transition from a death economy to a life economy is truly about a change in consciousness — a consciousness revolution.

  CHAPTER 46

  What You Can Do

  “John Lennon said, ‘All you need is love,’” Samantha Thomas told me. “What better way to honor the peace prize than through a summit that reflects his ideas?”

  Yoko Ono had awarded me the Lennon Ono Grant for Peace and, along with it, a major contribution to Dream Change. The organization had been relatively quiet for several years, but now Samantha, a brilliant, dynamic, and determined person in her twenties, had come on board as its executive director. She wanted to sponsor a 2015 conference that would encourage businesses to achieve higher, more compassionate standards. She and I convinced Dan Wieden, cofounder and chairman of the board of Wieden+Kennedy, one of the most successful and highly respected advertising agencies in the world, to cohost it with me. From the beginning, Samantha had called it the Love Summit. At first, Dan and I objected. We were concerned that “love” might be inappropriate for a business conference. However, our attitudes soon changed.

  Like many of the attendees, who were successful entrepreneurs and corporate executives, Dan and I c
ame to understand that when we love ourselves, the earth, and one another, everything gets better. Several speakers pointed out that marketing is aimed at convincing consumers to love a company and its products. To change the world, all we need to do is inspire consumers to love companies and products that serve life, and to persuade businesspeople that if they want their companies and products to be loved, they must commit to doing just that.

  As I listened to speaker after speaker expound upon the need for businesses to move into a new consciousness, I kept thinking about Tunduam, the Shuar shaman who had saved my life by changing my mind-set. The world is as we dream it, and we’ve been living a dream that combines excessive materialism with a divide-and-conquer, them-versus-us mentality.

  “If I am to have more stuff,” we’ve told ourselves, “I must take from them.” It is time to change that mind-set. It is time to act in ways that support a new dream.

  When Samantha said, at the close of the summit, “It turns out that love really is all you need,” I realized that she was expressing the basis of the new dream. It is the dream that indigenous people and spiritual teachers — from Mother Teresa to the Dalai Lama, from the Buddha to Pope Francis — have always dreamed. It is a dream of love — for ourselves, for each other, for nature, and for the planet. It is a dream that tells us to replace the old dream of a death economy with a new dream of a life economy.

  This new dream is of an economy that cleans up polluted waters, soil, and air; empowers hungry and starving people to feed themselves; develops transportation, communications, manufacturing, and energy systems that do not deplete resources; applies recycling and solar technologies; creates market, banking, and exchange systems that are community oriented and not based on debt currencies or war. In essence, it is a new dream, founded on courage and love rather than fear and hatred.

  Since 2004, when the original of this book was published, I’ve spoken at conferences of business executives, at rock concerts, and at consumer summits. I’ve met with government leaders and lectured at universities in many countries. I’ve grown increasingly impressed with the messages I’ve heard. Entrepreneurs, lawyers, executives, farmers, and homemakers — people from all walks of life — are changing their dreams from the ones prevalent ten years ago, about wealth and power, to the ones more common today, about the desire to raise families in an environmentally sustainable and regenerative, socially just, and personally fulfilling world.

  People everywhere understand the need for this revolution. We know that we must do whatever it takes to birth a life economy. We also know that each of us must do the things we love. You and I — we — are the ones to make this revolution happen. To do that, we must love who we are and what we do.

  This book demonstrates that global corporations run this failed geopolitical/economic system. To change the system, we must change the dream of corporations.

  Some argue that we need to rid the planet of corporations; however, the likelihood of this happening — at least in my lifetime — is extremely low. I think, instead, we need to take the shamanic approach, to transform — shapeshift — the attitudes and goals of those who own and manage the corporations.

  Corporations are highly effective at channeling brilliant ideas into concrete action. But their dream of maximizing profits without regard for the environmental and social costs, their orientation toward pillaging resources and promoting debt and materialism, has been disastrous. It is time for a new dream that is based on serving the earth, the public, and future generations — not just of humans but of all beings.

  We are empowered by the many ways we’ve changed corporations in the recent past — by boycotting ones that supported apart-heid, polluted our rivers, refused to hire women or minorities, objected to same-sex marriages, rejected organic produce, opposed food labeling, and so much more.

  We are encouraged by the knowledge that many executives and business owners are as concerned as anyone else. Whether they are employees of Fortune 500 corporations or proprietors of mom-and-pop stores, they are not members of the corporatocracy and therefore are exploited along with the rest of us. Even the so-called 1 percent (which are actually the 0.1 percent) are threatened. If this space station crashes, we all crash.

  When I was first invited to speak at corporate conferences and MBA programs, I asked the organizers why they would want to hear from the author of a book such as mine. They answered that their people were smart enough to recognize that the current system verges on collapse. Until now, businesspeople may not have thought in terms of a death economy versus a life economy, but they understand that to be successful, they will have to embrace new models. They are searching for innovative approaches and ways to implement them.

  CEOs who desire to change their corporate strategies tell me that they fear that if they lose short-term market share or profits, they will be replaced by someone who cares only about market share or profits. Feeling trapped in an archaic structure, they crave consumer movements that generate thousands of letters and e-mails saying things like “I love your product but will not buy it until you pay your workers a living wage.” They can then take this information to their executive committee, key stockholders, the founder, or whoever has the ability to fire them.

  For me, hearing such admissions is encouraging, because it identifies us as the ones with the real power. It tells us that the marketplace is a democracy, if we choose to use it as such; that every time we buy something, we cast a vote. It also provides a way to enlist the people on the inside of corporations. This revolution needs people on the inside. They can play major roles in creating the new economy.

  We are in this together. All of us. We must do what it takes to cultivate the life economy. Now. It is time to admit that we are not fighting a war against terrorists, corporations, or any other “them.” We are engaged in a course of action to end the EHM system. We all are part of a process that has failed us. We’ve bought into it, we’ve supported it, we’ve praised and glorified it. Now we must act to change it.

  Like the Andean brick makers discussed in chapter 1, we need to face our fears, take offense at the injustices we’ve suffered, and stop looking for others to set things right. We must be willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that our children have a future.

  When I was growing up in New Hampshire, I wished I’d been born in the 1700s so I could participate in the American Revolution. But the American Revolution was only a partial success. Although the British were defeated, many injustices continued for years — affecting women, minorities, the middle class, and the poor. Now those injustices affect us all; they threaten life as we know it on this planet.

  Today’s revolution is much bigger than the American Revolution. It is bigger than the agricultural or industrial revolutions. It is nothing less than a consciousness revolution. The change in consciousness includes a transition from masculine, hierarchical mind-sets and actions to ones that are more fluid, egalitarian, and feminine. It necessitates an acknowledgment that defending our home now means nurturing our home, and a recognition that our home is the entire planet.

  This book has described the four pillars of modern empire: fear, debt, insufficiency (the temptation to keep consuming more), and the divide-and-conquer mind-set. The idea that anything and everything is justified — coups and assassinations, drone strikes, NSA eavesdropping — as long as it props up those four pillars has shackled us to a feudal and corrupt system. It is a system that cannot be sustained.

  We must do whatever it takes to change the dream behind such justifications; to convert fear into the courage to create a better world; to replace debt with generosity, anxiety over insufficiency with certainty that a life economy provides sustainable abundance. We must transform masculine aggression with feminine nurturance. We must replace divide-and-conquer mentalities with compassion and a commitment to regenerating ravaged environments. We must unite as a crew that will navigate this space station toward a truly prosperous future.

  During my t
ravels, one of the things I hear from people is that Confessions of an Economic Hit Man “connects the dots.” In 2004, those dots led to the conclusion that people had been terribly misinformed about how the United States and its corporations deceive, abuse, and exploit economically developing countries. The post-2004 dots go much further. They lead us to the conclusion that we in the United States and in the rest of the so-called developed countries also have been hit — we have been abused and exploited by many of the tools that I and other EHMs used in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

  Connecting the post-2004 dots leads to the additional conclusion that we must do whatever it takes to change. We must act.

  Such actions start with the recognition that we are presented with many choices throughout life. Fate. Chance. Accident. Opportunity. We can see these things as good or bad. What is important is not so much that they happen as how we react to them.

  I once accepted a lot of money not to write a book. I chose to use the money to help people in countries I’d exploited. Out of that came my reconnection with Amazonian people, the formation of several nonprofits, and a new career as a writer and public speaker.

  When we look at things that happen to us as bearers of messages, we open doors of opportunity for action.

  The earth is offering us a strong message. The ice caps and glaciers are melting. The oceans are rising. Species are going extinct. This planet, our home, is demanding that we see her as a living Earth. She is not just a mass of rock and soil spinning around an indifferent sun. She is a biological member of a living universe. And she is sending a message: repent, reform, love her.

  What will we do with that message, you and I?

  We have the opportunity to dream a new dream, to explore options for exciting alternative ways of living, for turning failure into success, for building systems that, like the living Earth, are organic, are locally based, and, at the same time, interweave the fabrics of our global community.