The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

by John Perkins

Over the past three decades, sixty of the world’s poorest countries have paid $550 billion in principal and interest on loans of $540 billion, yet they still owe a whopping $523 billion on those same loans. The cost of servicing that debt is more than these countries spend on health or education and is twenty times the amount they receive annually in foreign aid.

Economically developing countries fear their vulnerability to global corporations. Because of the trade agreements and conditionalities imposed on them through the debt agreements, their economies seem dependent on those corporations. They fear they can’t survive without the corporations.

“Aid” organizations such as the World Bank increased the interest rates on loans, made political demands, and imposed conditionalities on the debtor countries, influencing the way they governed themselves and related to the United States and the corporations.

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.