The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

by John Perkins

  http://action.sierraclub.org/site/DocServer/Final_Draft_Downing_Involuntary_Resettlement_at_KPP_Repo.pdf?docID=15541

  A joint investigation by ProPublica and Frontline exposes definite evidence of an intimate relationship between American corporation Firestone and brutal Liberian warlord Charles Taylor in the early 1990s: “Firestone served as a source of food, fuel, trucks and cash used by Taylor’s ragtag rebel army, according to interviews, internal corporate documents and declassified diplomatic cables. The company signed a deal in 1992 to pay taxes to Taylor’s rebel government. Over the next year, the company doled out more than $2.3 million in cash, checks and food to Taylor, according to an accounting in court files,” in return for protection.

  https://www.propublica.org/article/firestone-and-the-warlord-intro

  The Nation exposes the deception and secrecy of America’s lobby industry in an article titled “Where Have All the Lobbyists Gone?.” Thanks to legal loopholes that allow those in the lobbying industry to remain officially unregistered as lobbyists, the industry is “going underground.” While only 12,281 lobbyists were registered in 2013, experts say the “true number of working lobbyists is closer to 100,000.” Additionally, although official spending on lobbyists in the US in 2013 was $3.2 billion, the article estimates the unofficial total as $9 billion. Jeffrey Sachs estimates an unofficial total of $30 billion, which he breaks down sector by sector in his book The Price of Civilization (New York: Random House, 2011). The primary economic impact of lobbyists is the securing of government subsidies for giant corporations, whether through tax credits, fee reductions, giveaways, or simple subsidies.

  www.thenation.com/article/178460/shadow-lobbying-complex

  A New York district court rules that the Democratic Republic of the Congo must pay two vulture funds — Themis Capital and Des Moines Investments — a total of about $70 million, $50 million of which represents interest on the original debt, which was valued at roughly $18 million when the funds acquired it from Citibank and others in 2008.

  www.jubileeusa.org/vulturefunds/vulture-fund-country-studies.html

  2015

  A team of more than fifty journalists associated with the Huffington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists launches an investigative project titled “Evicted & Abandoned.” The in-depth, ongoing report, How the World Bank Broke Its Promise to Protect the Poor, documents the people who have been displaced by World Bank projects in Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru, and elsewhere. The introduction of the report reveals the terrifying scope of the ramifications: “From 2004 to 2013, the bank’s projects physically or economically displaced an estimated 3.4 million people, forcing them from their homes, taking their land or damaging their livelihoods, ICIJ’s analysis of World Bank records reveals.”

  http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/worldbank-evicted-abandoned

  Global Justice Now releases a briefing titled Privatising Power: UK Aid Funds Privatization in Nigeria. The report states, “As part of a £100 million project run by consultants Adam Smith International, the UK is using an estimated £50 million of aid money to support energy sector privatisation in Nigeria. Although the process is yet to be completed, the results so far have been disastrous, with Nigerian people facing higher prices, poor service and regular blackouts. The companies involved in the privatisation have made many workers redundant and had to be bailed out by the central bank in 2014.”

  www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/nigeria_energy_privatisation_briefing_online_0.pdf

  The New York Times describes how the “sale of US arms fuels the wars of Arab states”: “To wage war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is using F-15 fighter jets bought from Boeing. Pilots from the United Arab Emirates are flying Lockheed Martin’s F-16 to bomb both Yemen and Syria. Soon, the Emirates are expected to complete a deal with General Atomics for a fleet of Predator drones to run spying missions in their neighborhood. As the Middle East descends into proxy wars, sectarian conflicts and battles against terrorist networks, countries in the region that have stockpiled American military hardware are now actually using it and wanting more. The result is a boom for American defense contractors looking for foreign business in an era of shrinking Pentagon budgets — but also the prospect of a dangerous new arms race in a region where the map of alliances has been sharply redrawn.”

  www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/world/middleeast/sale-of-us-arms-fuels-the-wars-of-arab-states.html

  Deutsche Bank reaches a $2.5 billion settlement in the recent Libor scandal, against charges that the international financial giant “conspired to manipulate global interest rate benchmarks.”

  http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/23/news/deutsche-bank-libor-settlement/?iid=EL

  The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), a member of Eurodad, publishes a report called Fool’s Gold: How Canadian Mining Company Eldorado Gold Destroys the Greek Environment and Dodges Tax through Dutch Mailbox Companies. As described by Eurodad: “This report reveals that Greece’s economic recovery is being undermined by large-scale tax avoidance — enabled by the Netherlands. At the same time, Greece endures harsh austerity measures imposed by the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF which are supported by the Netherlands.”

  www.eurodad.org/Entries/view/1546374/2015/04/01/Fool-s-Gold-How-Canadian-mining-company-Eldorado-Gold-destroys-the-Greek-environment-and-dodges-tax-through-Dutch-mailbox-companies

  WikiLeaks releases a confidential draft chapter from the TransPacific Partnership illustrating the United States’ aims to support corporations at the expense of fair trade and locally owned businesses in foreign countries. As reported by Yes! Magazine: “The document substantiates claims by opponents that the TPP is a corporate-rights agreement designed to facilitate the export of US jobs, allow corporations to sue governments for enacting labor and environmental protections, make it illegal for governments to favor local businesses, and advance the colonization of national economies by global corporations and financiers.”

  www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/trade-rule-illegal-favor-local-business-tpp-leak-WikiLeaks?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20150417

  Global Justice Now releases a briefing about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), calling it a “threat to local democracy, affecting the freedom local authorities have in decision making when these affect the interests of large US corporations.” It further states that the deal “could threaten public services, set up shady arbitration panels capable of overruling the UK court system and undermine regulations such as health and safety standards.”

  www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/local_authorities_briefing_0.pdf

  NBC 11 reports on the American Legislative Exchange Council’s “corporate bill mill,” which gives corporations heavy influence over legislation. The ALEC Exposed website offers substantial evidence about how “global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights.”

  https://secure2.convio.net/comcau/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=650&autologin=true

  www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

  WikiLeaks releases more than half a million US diplomatic cables from 1978. As reported by DemocracyNow!: “The documents include diplomatic cables and other diplomatic communications from and to US embassies and missions in nearly every country. ‘1978 actually set in progress many of the geopolitical elements that are playing out today,’ [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange said. ‘1978 was the beginning of the Iranian revolution . . . the Sandinista movement started in its popular form . . . the war period in Afghanistan began in 1978 and hasn’t stopped since.’”

  www.democracynow.org/2015/5/28/WikiLeaks_releases_500k_us_cables_from

  FIFA scandal: In May 2015, American officials announce “a sweeping indictment against 14 soccer officials and marketing executives who they said had corrupted the sport through two decades of s
hadowy dealing and $150 million in bribes. Authorities described international soccer in terms normally reserved for Mafia families or drug cartels, and brought charges under racketeering laws usually applied to such criminal organizations. . . . Whether through convoluted financial deals or old-fashioned briefcases full of cash, people were expected to pay for access to FIFA’s river of money and publicity. The federal indictment lists 47 counts, including bribery, fraud and money laundering.”

  www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/sports/soccer/fifa-officials-arrested-on-corruption-charges-blatter-isnt-among-them.html?_r=1

  The International Accountability Project releases a report titled Back to Development: A Call for What Development Could Be, which examines forced evictions and other human rights abuses connected with World Bank–funded projects in Cambodia, Egypt, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere. Among other findings, the report calculates that “in four World Bank funded projects 71 percent of those displaced received no compensation for the losses they suffered.”

  www.mediafire.com/view/zw1g9k4wr83jr5v/IAP_FOR_WEB_R013.pdf

  https://medium.com/@accountability/in-chennai-india-residents-demand-the-world-bank-respect-human-rights-43a4d121b8f2

  ProPublica publishes a scathing investigative report on the Red Cross’s “development” projects in Haiti — or rather, lack thereof — in a piece titled “How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes.” In sum: “The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, e-mails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success. . . . The Red Cross won’t disclose details of how it has spent the hundreds of millions of dollars donated for Haiti. But our reporting shows that less money reached those in need than the Red Cross has said.”

  https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes

  Profiting from Poverty, Again: DFID’s Support for Privatising Education and Health, a report released by Global Justice Now, shows how the UK aid budget “is being used to increasingly set up private health-care and private education across Africa and Asia.” As described in the report: “Some of these private services are being run by UK-based businesses that have an inappropriately close relationship to those making decisions in the Department for International Development (DFID). Others are being run in conjunction with mega multinationals like Coca-Cola, which clearly perceives not only an opportunity to greenwash its brand, but a direct commercial advantage.” In sum, “aid is being used as a tool to convince, cajole, and compel the majority of the world to undertake policies which help big business, but which undermine public services emerging or thriving.”

  www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/profiting_from_poverty_again_dfid_global_justice_now_1.pdf

  A report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and published in the Huffington Post finds “sharp growth” in World Bank and International Finance Corporation investments in projects “categorized by the bankers as expected to have ‘irreversible or unprecedented’ social or environmental impacts.” From the article: “From 2009 to 2013, the two lenders pumped $50 billion in 239 of these high-risk ‘Category A’ projects, including dams, copper mines and oil pipelines — more than twice as much as the previous five-year span, records show. Much of the development is in countries like Peru, where federal governments are weak and regulations are lax.”

  http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/worldbank-evicted-abandoned/how-worldbank-finances-environmental-destruction-peru

  Oxfam releases a briefing titled The Suffering of Others: The Human Cost of the International Finance Corporation’s Lending through Financial Intermediaries. The report states that the IFC made $36 billion worth of investments into so-called “financial intermediaries” (including commercial banks, private equity funds, and hedge funds) between 2009 and 2013, yet “does not know where much of its money under this new model is ending up or even whether it’s helping or harming,” according to the head of Oxfam International’s Washington, DC, office. The report further reveals that “of the 49 investments the IFC made to financial intermediaries since 2012 that it did classify as ‘high risk,’ it has only publicly disclosed sub-projects in three of these deals. ‘That means there is no public information about where 94 percent of the IFC’s “high risk” intermediary investments have actually ended up,’ said [report coauthor Natalie] Bugalski.”

  www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/ib-suffering-of-others-international-finance-corporation-020415-en.pdf

  www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2015-04-02/billions-out-control-ifc-investments-third-parties-causing-human-rights-abuses

  As of July 2015 (with data current as of November 2014), half of USAID’s top ten vendors are multinational corporations: Chemonics (number 3); John Snow, Incorporated (number 7); DAI Washington (number 8); Management Sciences for Health, Inc. (number 9); and Jhpiego Corporation (number 10). And the number one vendor for USAID, with more than $2 billion in “amounts obligated”? The World Bank.

  www.usaid.gov/results-and-data/budget-spending/top-40-vendors

  The New Republic reveals the incentives that financial institutions offer their employees to take influential government positions — and the institutions’ attempts to hide the exact nature of those incentives — in an article titled “Wall Street Pays Bankers to Work in Government and It Doesn’t Want Anyone to Know.” According to the article: “Citigroup is one of three Wall Street banks attempting to keep hidden their practice of paying executives multimillion-dollar awards for entering government service. . . . Critics argue these ‘golden parachutes’ ensure more financial insiders in policy positions and favorable treatment toward Wall Street.” A related report by Bloomberg shows the increase in the percentage of workers who moved from regulatory jobs to banks, and vice versa, from 1988 to 2013, thus illustrating the so-called revolving door between regulatory bodies and the companies they are charged to oversee. These findings are fortified by evidence revealed in a 2013 investigation by the Project on Government Oversight, which demonstrates how “major corporations . . . make it financially advantageous for executives to take government jobs. . . . Through their compensation policies, companies may be fueling the revolving door and making it easier for their alumni to gain influence over public policy.” One prime example may be Billy Tauzin, a former House Republican who helped draft and pass the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which was favorable to pharmaceutical companies; later that year, “the same month that President Bush signed the bill, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which goes by the nickname PhRMA and represents the largest American drug and biotech companies, was pursuing Tauzin to be its president.” Ten months later, Tauzin took the job, at a reported annual salary of $2 million.

  www.newrepublic.com/article/120967/wall-street-pays-bankers-work-government-and-wants-it-secret

  www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-30/fed-s-revolving-door-spins-faster-as-banks-boost-hiring

  www.pogo.org/our-work/reports/2013/big-businesses-offer-revolving-door-rewards.html

  www.nbcnews.com/id/11714763/t/tauzin-aided-drug-firms-then-they-hired-him/#.VZ3V46YyFLg

  An investigation by the Guardian reveals that subsidies totaling $1.62 billion to Shell, ExxonMobil, and Marathon Petroleum “were all granted by politicians who received significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.” The report also finds that in 2013, “the coal, oil and gas industries benefited from subsidies of $550 billion, four times those given to renewable energy.”

  www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/12/us-taxpayers-subsidising-worlds-biggest-fossil-fuel-companies

  Reports continue to surface about the expanded role of US government–su
pported jackals. An investigation by the New York Times reveals the “secret history of quiet killings and blurred lines” of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, “one of the nation’s most mythologized, most secretive and least scrutinized military organizations.” In other words, the team operates as modern-day jackals but do not limit themselves to the assassination of inconvenient foreign leaders, expanding their reach to all “suspected militants.” In fact, jackals have established their own industry of private security companies. The United States is the “world’s largest consumer of private military and security services,” according to the University of Denver’s Sié Chéou-Kang Center’s Private Security Monitor project. Many of these private security companies have become embroiled in allegations of severe misconduct and the killing of civilians. The most well-known scandal, “Black-watergate,” involved a massacre of Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square (among other atrocities), allegedly by Blackwater USA, a leading US mercenary company, and the alleged systematic evasion of prosecution by those perpetrating the violence.

  www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/world/asia/the-secret-history-of-seal-team-6.html?_r=1

  http://psm.du.edu/articles_reports_statistics/data_and_statistics.html#usdata

  www.thenation.com/article/blackwatergate#

  The New Left Review dissects the spread of EHM attitudes and activity throughout the Eurozone in an article titled “Germany’s Faltering Motor?.” From the article: “A small bloc of northern countries led by Germany enjoys current account surpluses and dictates the terms of economic reorganization to indebted countries of the south, under the imprimatur of the Troika.” The Troika comprises the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, which collectively monitor countries “in severe economic trouble that are receiving financial loans provided for by the EU and the IMF.” As Troika Watch explains, “Essentially, the Troika ensures that the small woman and small man in the street pays for systemic problems in the economy and mistakes made by financial institutions, which are the real causes of the crisis. At the same time, in the past few years, European lawmakers have continuously been reducing the rules and controls on those financial institutions and big businesses.” The effects of these northern-countries-as-EHMs have been disastrous for other countries in the EU that are subject to dramatic austerity measures. According to the New Left Review, “In Greece, the effects of the world economic crisis of 2008 have been compounded by this grinding austerity, resulting in unparalleled destruction of its national economy. The country has now suffered a depression worse than that of the 1930s, with no recovery in sight within the euro framework. Spain, Portugal and Italy, the latter a founding member of the European integration process, remain trapped in a disastrous downturn. Since 2012, each has experienced an official unemployment rate in double digits — 25 percent in the case of Spain — with youth unemployment still higher.”