Confessions of an Economic Hitman

I "read" a book during my travels for work called Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins.  I put "read" in quotes because it was an audio book.  Anyway, the book was absolutely fascinating.  It is the story of a man's life who got caught up in what he infers is an active plan to solidify America's imperialistic interests.  His job as an "Economic Hitman" consisted of visiting countries and creating falsified econometric reports.  These reports suggested that a developing country's economy would boom if the IMF and World Bank loaned them billions of dollars in order to pay American companies to install oil pipelines, build dams, or do a number of other infrastructure projects.  Of course, since these reports were fudged, the countries economies did not boom as projected.  So what happened?  Well, the American companies got rich.  What else happened?  Well, these developing countries ended up with an enormous loan debt that they could not pay off leaving them at the mercy of the World Bank and IMF.  In essence, they were at the mercy of the United States since we provide most of the funding for these organizations.  The US then used its position to force these countries to house US military bases and vote our way at the UN.  Pretty crazy stuff - maybe it's true.

 

The bottom line here is these large companies and international organizations are set up only to benefit the cronies and rich countries that created the systems in the first place.  If we really wanted to help these countries and the dire situation that their poor life in, we need to encourage them to open up their markets for free trade and for us to drop our tariffs and trade restrictions so the developing countries can compete.  It's not rocket science.

 

Well, maybe all those Christian missionaries that go down there on mission trips (vacations) to put on a sad face and pretend like they made a difference will get it done. Bah!