by John Perkins
http://newleftreview.org/II/93/joshua-rahtz-germany-s-faltering-motor
www.troikawatch.net/what-is-the-troika
Jubilee USA describes how Cameroon probably feels hounded “by multiple vulture funds, including Grace Church Capital (Cayman Islands), Antwerp (UK Virgin Islands), Sconset Limited (UK Virgin Islands) and Winslow Bank (Bahamas). . . . Grace Church Capital bought Cameroonian debt for $9.5 million and then sued for nearly $40 million, while Sconset bought its share for $15 million and sued for $67 million. Antwerp also bought its debt for about $15 million, but is claiming an astounding $196 million from a country that ranks 150th on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) and has a GDP of just $22 billion. Winslow Bank, meanwhile, sued for nearly $50 million for just $9 million worth of debt, and attempted to seize Cameroonian assets abroad as a means of enforcing its victory in court.”
www.jubileeusa.org/vulturefunds/vulture-fund-country-studies.html
The Wall Street Journal reports that corporations avoid paying an estimated $200 billion in taxes every year by using offshore banking systems, according to the United States Conference on Trade and Development.
www.wsj.com/articles/companies-avoid-paying-200-billion-in-tax-1435161106
Truthout dissects the World Bank and its connections to the tiny group of elites who control the global economic system in an article titled “The World Bank, Poverty Creation and the Banality of Evil.”
www.truth-out.org/news/item/29851-the-world-bank-poverty-creation-and-the-banality-of-evil
In an article titled “The Death of International Development,” London School of Economics fellow Jason Hickel reminds us of the ever-increasing wealth ratio between the richest and the poorest countries: “In 1973 the gap was around 44:1. Today it’s nearly 80:1. Inequality has reached such extremes that now the richest 67 people in the world — a number of people who could fit comfortably on a London bus — have more wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion.”
www.thoughtleader.co.za/jasonhickel/2014/11/24/the-death-of-international-development
Eric Holder retires from his position as US attorney general to return to his former law firm Covington & Burling — whose client list includes “many of the big banks Holder failed to criminally prosecute as attorney general for their role in the financial crisis, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.” In an interview with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi says, “I think this is probably the single biggest example of the revolving door that we’ve ever had.”
www.democracynow.org/2015/7/8/eric_holder_returns_to_wall_street
Two major debt crises — in Greece and in Puerto Rico — come to a head on the international stage. Because these crises are rapidly evolving as of the completion of this chapter in July 2015, please refer to news outlets for current information. The New York Times also offers a good starting point for understanding the Greek debt crisis.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/international/greece-debt-crisis-euro.html
John Perkins Personal History
1963
Graduates prep school, enters Middlebury College.
1964
Befriends Farhad, son of an Iranian general. Drops out of Middlebury.
1965
Works for Hearst newspapers in Boston.
1966
Enters Boston University’s College of Business Administration.
1967
Marries former Middlebury classmate, whose “Uncle Frank” is a top-echelon executive at the National Security Agency (NSA).
1968
Profiled by the NSA as an ideal economic hit man (EHM). With Uncle Frank’s blessing, joins the Peace Corps and is assigned to the Ecuadorian Amazon, where ancient indigenous nations battle US oil companies.
1969
Lives in the rain forest and the Andes. Experiences firsthand the deceitful and destructive practices employed by oil companies and government agencies, and their negative impacts on local cultures and environments.
1970
In Ecuador, meets vice president of international consulting firm MAIN, who is also an NSA liaison officer.
1971
Joins MAIN, undergoes clandestine training in Boston as an economic hit man, and is sent as part of an eleven-man team to Java, Indonesia. Struggles with conscience over pressure to falsify economic studies.
1972
Due to willingness to “cooperate,” is promoted to chief economist and is viewed as a whiz kid. Meets important leaders, including World Bank president Robert McNamara. Sent on special assignment to Panama. Befriended by Panamanian president and charismatic leader Omar Torrijos; learns about history of US imperialism and Torrijos’s determination to transfer Canal ownership from the United States to Panama.
1973
Career skyrockets. Builds empire within MAIN; continues work in Panama; travels extensively and conducts studies in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
1974
Instrumental in initiating a huge EHM success in Saudi Arabia. Royal family agrees to invest billions of dollars of oil income in US securities and to allow the US Department of the Treasury to use the interest from those investments to hire US firms to build power and water systems, highways, ports, and cities in the kingdom. In exchange, the United States guarantees that the royal family will continue to rule. This will serve as a model for future EHM deals, including one that ultimately fails in Iraq.
1975
Promoted again — to youngest partner in MAIN’s hundred-year history — and named manager of Economics and Regional Planning. Publishes series of influential papers; lectures at Harvard and other institutions.
1976
Heads major projects around the world, in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America, and the Middle East. Learns from the shah of Iran a revolutionary approach to EHM empire building.
1977
Due to personal relationships in Colombia, becomes exposed to the plight of farmers who are branded as Communist terrorists and drug traffickers but are in fact peasants trying to protect their families and homes.
1978
Rushed out of Iran by Farhad. Together, they fly to the Rome home of Farhad’s father, an Iranian general, who predicts the shah’s imminent ouster and blames US policy, corrupt leaders, and despotic governments for the hatred sweeping the Middle East. He warns that if the United States does not become more compassionate, the situation will deteriorate.
1979
Struggles with conscience as the shah flees his country and Iranians storm the US Embassy, taking fifty-two hostages. Realizes that the United States is a nation laboring to deny the truth about its imperialist role in the world. After years of tension and frequent separations, divorces first wife.
1980
Suffers from deep depression, guilt, and the realization that money and power have trapped him at MAIN. Quits.
1981
Is deeply disturbed when Ecuador’s president, Jaime Roldós (who has campaigned on an anti-oil platform), and Panama’s Omar Torrijos (who has incurred the wrath of powerful Washington interests, due to his positions on the Panama Canal and US military bases) die in fiery airplane crashes that have all the markings of CIA assassinations. Marries for the second time, to a woman whose father is chief architect at Bechtel and is in charge of designing and building cities in Saudi Arabia — work financed through the 1974 EHM deal.
1982
Creates Independent Power Systems (IPS), a company committed to producing environmentally friendly electricity. He and his wife Winifred father Jessica.
1983-1989
Succeeds spectacularly as IPS CEO, with much help from “coincidences” — people in high places, tax breaks, etc. As a father, frets over world crises and former EHM role. Begins writing a tell-all book but is offered a lucrative consultant’s retainer on the condition that he not write the book.
1990-1991
Following the US in
vasion of Panama and imprisonment of Manuel Noriega, sells IPS and retires at forty-five. Contemplates book about life as an EHM but instead is persuaded to direct energies toward creating a nonprofit organization, an effort that, he is told, would be negatively affected by such a book.
1992-2000
Watches the EHM failures in Iraq that result in the first Gulf War. Three times starts to write the EHM book, but instead gives in to threats and bribes. Tries to assuage conscience by writing books about indigenous peoples, supporting nonprofit organizations, teaching at New Age forums, traveling to the Amazon and the Himalayas, meeting with the Dalai Lama, and engaging in other activities.
2001-2002
Leads a group of North Americans deep into the Amazon and is there with indigenous people on September 11, 2001. Spends a day at Ground Zero and commits to writing the book that can heal his pain and expose the truth behind economic hit men.
2003-2004
Returns to the Ecuadorian Amazon to meet with the indigenous nations who have threatened war against the oil companies; writes Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
2005-2016
Following publication of the international best seller Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, takes his message of the need to replace the death economy with a life economy on global speaking tours to corporate summits, large groups of CEOs and other business leaders, consumer conferences, music festivals, and more than fifty universities. Writes The Secret History of the American Empire, Hoodwinked, and The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
NOTES
Chapter 1. Dirty Business
1. For a brief look at some of the long-term results of this strategy, see “A Rainforest Chernobyl,” ChevronToxico, accessed July 24, 2015, chevrontoxico.com/about/rainforest-chernobyl.
Chapter 3. “In for Life”
1. Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
2. Jane Mayer, “Contract Sport: What Did the Vice-President Do for Halliburton?” New Yorker, February 16 & 23, 2004, p. 83.
Chapter 4. Indonesia: Lessons for an EHM
1. Jean Gelman Taylor, Indonesia: Peoples and Histories (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); and Theodore Friend, Indonesian Destinies (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003). See also Rex Mortimer, Indonesian Communism under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics, 1959–1965 (Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing, 2006).
Chapter 5. Saving a Country from Communism
1. Tim Weiner, “Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War, Dies at 93,” New York Times, July 7, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/us/07mcnamara.html.
Chapter 6. Selling My Soul
1. Susan Rosegrant and David R. Lampe, Route 128: Lessons from Boston’s High-Tech Community (New York: Basic Books, 1993).
Chapter 7. My Role as Inquisitor
1. Theodore Friend, Indonesian Destinies (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003), 5.
Chapter 8. Civilization on Trial
1. Arnold Toynbee and D. C. Somervell, Civilization on Trial and The World and the West (New York: Meridian Books, 1958).
Chapter 10. Panama’s President and Hero
1. See David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999); William Friar, Portrait of the Panama Canal: From Construction to the Twenty-First Century (New York: Graphic Arts Publishing Company, 1999); and Graham Greene, Conversations with the General (New York: Pocket Books, 1984).
2. See “Zapata Petroleum Corp.,” Fortune, April 1958, p. 248; Darwin Payne, Initiative in Energy: Dresser Industries, Inc. 1880–1978 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979); Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker, and Paul Muolo, Inside Job: The Looting of America’s Savings and Loans (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989); Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999); and Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon — Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).
3. Manuel Noriega and Peter Eisner, America’s Prisoner: The Memoirs of Manuel Noriega (New York: Random House, 1997); Omar Torrijos Herrera, Ideario (Editorial Universitaria Centroamericano, 1983); Graham Greene, Conversations with the General (New York: Pocket Books, 1984).
4. Greene, Conversations; and Noriega and Eisner, Memoirs.
5. Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words (New York: Context Books, 2000), 86–88.
6. Greene, Conversations; and Noriega and Eisner, Memoirs.
Chapter 11. Pirates in the Canal Zone
1. For further reading about the Canal Zone, see John Major, Prize Possession: The United States Government and the Panama Canal 1903–1979 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999).
Chapter 13. Conversations with the General
1. William Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride: The Fate of an Ally (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988); and Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 45.
2. A great deal has been written about Arbenz, United Fruit, and the violent history of Guatemala. See, for example, Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1980); and Diane K. Stanley, For the Record: The United Fruit Company’s Sixty-Six Years in Guatemala (Guatemala City: Centro Impresor Piedra Santa, 1994). For quick reference, see “CIA Involved in Guatemala Coup, 1954,” last modified May 31, 2007, www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/guatemala.html. For more on the Bush family’s involvement, see “Zapata Petroleum Corp.,” Fortune, April 1958, p. 248.
Chapter 14. Entering a New and Sinister Period in Economic History
1. “Robert S. McNamara: 8th Secretary of Defense,” accessed August 12, 2015, www.defense.gov/specials/secdef_histories/SecDef_08.aspx.
Chapter 15. The Saudi Arabian Money-Laundering Affair
1. For more on the events leading up to the 1973 oil embargo and the impact of the embargo, see Thomas W. Lippman, Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004), 155–159; Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (New York: Free Press, 1993); Stephen Schneider, The Oil Price Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); and Ian Seymour, OPEC: Instrument of Change (London: Macmillan, 1980).
2. Lippman, Inside the Mirage, 160.
3. David Holden and Richard Johns, The House of Saud: The Rise and Rule of the Most Powerful Dynasty in the Arab World (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981), 359.
4. Lippman, Inside the Mirage, 167.
Chapter 16. Pimping, and Financing Osama bin Laden
1. Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Oil (New York: Crown Publishers, 2003), 26.
2. Thomas W. Lippman, Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 2004), 162.
3. Lippman, Inside the Mirage, 2.
4. Henry Wasswa, “Idi Amin, Murderous Ugandan Dictator, Dies,” Associated Press, August 17, 2003.
5. “The Saudi Connection,” US News & World Report, December 15, 2003, p. 21.
6. “The Saudi Connection,” 19, 20, 26.
7. Craig Unger, “Saving the Saudis,” Vanity Fair, October 2003. For more on the Bush family’s involvement, Bechtel, etc., see “Zapata Petroleum Corp.,” Fortune, April 1958, p. 248; Darwin Payne, Initiative in Energy: Dresser Industries, Inc. 1880–1978 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979); Nathan Vardi, “Desert Storm: Bechtel Group Is Leading the Charge,” Forbes, June 23, 2003, pp. 63–66; Rob Wherry, “Contacts for Contracts,” Forbes, June 23, 2003, p. 65; Graydon Carter, “Editor’s Letter: Fly the Friendly Skies . . . ,” Vanity Fair, October 2003; and Richard A. Oppel Jr. with Diana B. Henriques, “A Na
tion at War: The Contractor,” New York Times, April 18, 2003, www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/business/a-nation-at-war-the-contractor-company-has-ties-in-washington-and-to-iraq.html.