The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

by John Perkins

Outright lies can be refuted. Documents like those two were impossible to refute because they were based on glimmers of truth, not open deceptions, and because they were produced by a corporation that had earned the trust of other corporations, international banks, and governments.

There obviously was no discussion of the fact that I had been under tremendous pressure to produce highly inflated economic forecasts, or that much of my job revolved around arranging huge loans that countries like Indonesia and Panama could never repay.

It was there so that those in the inner circle of the world where I operated would understand that I had been part of the team that crafted the deal of the century, the deal that changed the course of world history but never reached the newspapers. I helped create a covenant that guaranteed continued oil for America, safeguarded the rule of the House of Saud, and assisted in the financing of Osama bin Laden and the protection of international criminals like Uganda’s Idi Amin.

status as chief economist and as manager of Economics and Regional Planning could not be attributed to my capabilities in either economics or planning; rather, it was a function of my willingness to provide the types of studies and conclusions my bosses and clients wanted, combined with a natural talent for persuading others through the written and spoken word.

I thought about the people who starved each day while my staff and I slept in first-class hotels, ate at the finest restaurants, and built up our financial portfolios.

The world had shifted, and what I’d later come to understand as the corporatocracy had progressed. We had gotten better or more pernicious. The people who worked for me were a different breed from me.

They had never heard the term “economic hit man” or even “EHM,” nor had they been told they were in for life. They simply had learned from my example and from my system of rewards and punishments. They knew that they were expected to produce the types of studies and results I wanted. Their salaries, their Christmas bonuses, indeed their very jobs, depended on pleasing me.

I also thought a great deal about the idea of integrity in business, about appearances versus reality.

Legend and folklore are full of tales about distorted truths and fraudulent deals: cheating rug merchants, usurious moneylenders, and tailors willing to convince the emperor that his clothes are invisible only to him.

now understood that we have reached a new level of deception, one that convinces us to do whatever it takes to promote a corrupt system that widens the rich–poor gap through fear, debt, and policies that constantly expand materialist consumption and advocate dividing and conquering anyone who appears to oppose us. These deceptions will lead to our own

destruction — not only morally but also physically, as a culture — unless we make significant changes soon.

The example of organized crime seemed to offer a metaphor. Mafia bosses often start out as street thugs. But over time, the ones who make it...

They are quick to lend money to those in desperate straits. Like the John Perkins in the MAIN résumé, these men appear to be model citizens. However, beneath this patina is a trail of blood. When the debtors cannot pay, hit men move in to demand their pound of flesh. If this is not granted, the jackals close in with baseball bats. Finally, as a last resort, out come the guns.

It was part of a sinister system aimed not at outfoxing an unsuspecting customer but, rather, at promoting the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever known.

The hoods had discarded their leather jackets, dressed up in business suits, and taken on an air of respectability.

streaming across every continent to convince corrupt politicians to allow their countries to be ensnared by the global corporate network, and to induce desperate people to sell their bodies to sweatshops and assembly lines.

Ecuador had suffered under a long line of dictators and right-wing oligarchies manipulated by US political and commercial interests.

The serious exploitation of oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin began in the late 1960s,

They saddled their country with huge amounts of debt, backed by the promise of oil revenues.1 Roads and industrial parks, hydroelectric dams, transmission and distribution

systems, and other power projects sprang up all over the country. International engineering and construction companies struck it rich — once again.

When he began campaigning for the presidency in 1978, he captured the attention of his countrymen and of citizens in every nation where foreign interests exploited oil — or where people desired independence from the influences of powerful outside forces. Roldós was the rare modern politician who was not afraid to oppose the status quo. He went after the oil companies and the not-so-subtle system that supported them.

Although it might have been a coincidence (and no link was ever proved), stories were told in many Amazonian communities that when seismologists reported to corporate headquarters that a certain region had characteristics indicating a high probability of oil beneath the surface, some SIL members went in and encouraged the indigenous people to move from that land, onto missionary reservations; there they would receive free food, shelter, clothes, medical treatment, and missionary-style education. The condition, according to these stories, was that the people had to deed their lands to the oil companies.

Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the murdered men, toured the United States, appearing on national television in order to raise money and support for SIL and the oil companies, who she claimed were helping the “savages” become civilized and educated. According to some sources, SIL received funding from the Rockefeller charities. Family scion John D. Rockefeller had founded Standard Oil — which later divested into the majors, including Chevron, Exxon, and Mobil.

Roldós’s strongly nationalistic position on oil threatened the world’s most influential companies.

Like Torrijos, Roldós was not a Communist but instead

stood for the right of his country to determine ...

They were popular, intelligent, charismatic leaders who were pragmatic rather than dogmatic. They were nationalistic but not anti-American. If corporatocracy was built by three sectors — major corporations, international banks, and colluding governments — Roldós

and Torrijos held out the possibility of removing the element of government collusion.

A major part of the Roldós platform was what came to be known as the Hydrocarbons Policy. This policy was based on the premise that Ecuador’s greatest potential resource was petroleum and that all future exploitation of that resource should be done in a manner that would bring the greatest benefit to the largest percentage of the population. R...

I was personally relieved that Carter was in the White House during this crucial time. Despite pressures from Texaco and other oil interests, Washington stayed pretty much out of the picture. I knew this would not have been the case under most other administrations — Republican or Democrat.

Our decisions will be inspired

solely by national interests and in the unrestricted defense of our sovereign rights.

We believe our relations with foreign companies have to be just; we have to be tough in the struggle; we have to be prepared for all kinds of pressures, but we should not display fear or an inferiority complex in negotiating with those foreigners.

I resolved that during the next year I would make a major change in my life and that in the future I would try to model myself after modern heroes like Jaime Roldós and Omar Torrijos.

felt a surge of jealousy. I wanted that sort of freedom. And then I understood.

My resentment, my anger, was not about my parents. I realized in that moment that my life was a gift from those parents I had so often disparaged. I owed Mom and Dad a great deal for all they’d done to prepare and inspire me to wend my way down the path that had taken me to this moment. I also had to accept personal responsibility for all the mistakes I’d made. Blaming them, as I’d done so many times, was not just foolish and unfair; it was self-defeating.

and I came face-to-face with the shocking fact that I too had been a slaver, that my job at MAIN had not been just about using debt to draw poor countries into the global empire.

My job was also about people and their families, people akin to the ones who had died to construct the wall I sat on, people I had exploited.

But I too had committed sin, and because I could remove myself from it, because I could cut myself off from the personal aspects, the bodies, the flesh, and the screams, perhaps in the final analysis I was the greater sinner.

do. I had to take responsibility. I knew that if I ever went back to my former life, to MAIN and all it represented, I would be lost forever.

The longer I stayed, the more difficult it was to get out. I could continue to beat myself up as I had beat on those stone walls, or I could escape.

I simply wanted out. I wanted to stop being a slaver.

For the next several years, I was employed as a highly paid expert witness —

primarily for US electric utility companies seeking to have new power plants approved for construction by public utilities commissions. One of my clients was the Public Service Company of New Hampshire. My job was to justify, under oath, the economic feasibility of the highly controversial Seabrook nuclear power plant.

He understood the underlying currents that threatened to turn the world into a global empire and to relegate the citizens of his country to a very minor role, bordering on servitude.

In November 1980, Carter lost the US presidential election to Ronald Reagan.

However, something subtler was also happening. A president whose greatest goal was world peace and who was dedicated to reducing US dependence on oil was replaced by a man who believed that the

United States’ rightful place was at the top of a world pyramid held up by military muscle, and that controlling oil fields wherever they existed was part of our Manifest Destiny. A president who installed solar panels on White House roofs was replaced by one who, immediately upon occupying the Oval Office, had them removed.

Carter may have been an ineffective politician, but he had a vision for America that was consistent with the one defined in our Declaration of Independence. In retrospect, he now seems naively archaic, a throwback to the ideals that molded this nation and drew so many of our grandparents to her shores. When we compare him to his immediate predeces...

Reagan, on the other hand, was most definitely a global ...