Confessions of an Economic Hitman

By: John Perkins

Narrated by: Brian Emerson

Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

This is the inside story of how America turned from a respected republic into a feared empire.

"Economic hit men," John Perkins writes, "are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder."

John Perkins should know; he was an economic hit man. His job was to convince countries that are strategically important to the U.S., from Indonesia to Panama, to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development and to make sure that the lucrative projects were contracted to Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown and Root, and other United States engineering and construction companies. Saddled with huge debts, these countries came under the control of the United States government, World Bank, and other U.S.-dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks, dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission.

This extraordinary real-life tale exposes international intrigue, corruption, and little-known government and corporate activities that have dire consequences for American democracy and the world.

Listen to John Perkins discuss the book on To the Best of Our Knowledge.

©2004 John Perkins (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks

great book

this book was very interesting and easy to follow. the story moved at a good pace. I recommend this book to anyone interested in international intrigue.

Revealing, sobering, almost religious revelations.

The only book that has come close to this one for me was WASHINGTON RULES. Between these two books, all the events, inter-relationships, and political tom-foolery of our government begins to make complete sense. You may not like what you hear, but you will come away a bit more educated.

Thought Provoking!

This book is very insightful. I gives you plenty of insight of what is really going on in world.

Great Book

Whether you believe the story that is told or not it will make a lot of sense if you are looking to find out how the world works.

"Once you're in, you can never get out" so how?

This is obviously a must read (listen) to anyone concerned with humanity, our world, politics, anything that matters. There is an important revelation how corrupt a lot of the causes of everyday politics are. I would say it sets a baseline of the level of corruption which you just have to know and acknowledge, anything less is woefully naive and dangerously enabling to even more corruption.

However, the big question is whether the author can be trusted not to leave important things out, or subtly steer us readers away to look elsewhere than in the center of where all this corruption comes from. Is the author controlled opposition?

To answer this question, I got the second edition also now, the New Confessions, which has a new part 5, that talks about the more recent history but also includes some re-assessment of his previous assessment of the bigger picture. So, my final thoughts are not yet formed on this. But some preliminary things that I am concerned with ...

There is one missing piece that sticks out like a sore thumb: His early female coach -- what's her name? Claudine? -- she said "once you're in, you can never get out". While the author generally credits Claudine for speaking the (ugly) truth, this threat apparently hasn't materialized. The author has revisited or explained how this "you can never get out" would have come to pass, or why and how he managed to get out anyway? If indeed he has.

This is a big question that potentially puts the entire book into question. Is he writing with permission? Is he allowed to expose some facts that can't be denied anyway, while leaving out key issues so nobody would ask? Is he leading the reader on a path conveniently around the more damaging revelations and potentially back into the arms of the same people and forces that are running the EHM system, just at a new level now?

The author himself may not even be aware of this, just as he hasn't been aware of the ways the NSA initially probed and then used his personal weaknesses for their benefits. His crusade now might be conveniently sandboxed by those same people who let him do it now despite having the power and the motive to shut down revelation of such insider information.

What strikes me -- and in part gives it away to me -- is the author's general use of leftist tropes of "social justice" and "sustainability", even feminist tropes, without any awareness that these causes have themselves been hijacked and perverted by the global empire, if not created by it in the first place. Especially the author's lack of questioning institutions and political systems, specifically saying that our institutions per se are not evil, that the evil is sort of an accident blamed on a mindset, which he repeats several times, that which believes all economic growth is good and that it is fine that people are being enslaved in sweat-shops. But I don't know anyone who says these things, rather, I hear a lot of big corporations and governments and the CIA now singing from the same sheet about "sustainable" growth and fairness and social justice, just like the author.

There is also the author's unquestioning view of NGOs as a force of good against evil empire and his general dismissal of the communist (and USSR empire) subversion that definitely was there in the 60's to 80's, and continues now in a decentralized way or from a headquarter other than Moscow. This makes me wonder that this man is half-reformed and half continues in the system and leading us to be critical to a controlled extent, but not beyond.

His proposed solutions have so far sounded trivial, inane, convenient for those who continue to run this system of global empire having fully appropriated for themselves the leftist rhetoric and perversion of ideals of "social justice" and "sustainability". So "let's just cut down on our personal oil use and private shopping habits" ... really? Shall we own nothing and be happy then? This end is completely loose. The author has an important story to tell, lots of interesting historical details, as a base line. But he is definitely in a strange way not red-pilled.

It might just be as with any good book that has some revelations to offer, that they have some good points, but one should go beyond and not just take everything in it with the same level of importance or authority. We, the people, definitely have to question beyond where the author dared (or was allowed) to go.

Everyone should read this book

What a fascinating read! It has made me look at what is happening in the world in a completely different way. I think everyone should read this book to see what is really going on. I also think John Perkins was very brave to have risked so much to tell his story.

Not really as good as I had hoped

The first few chapters are VERY chaotic writing and very hard to follow as he bounces around, not completing a thought. It improves vastly over the book. The next thing is it seems like he wants you to feel sorry for him for being an EHM vs him feeling sorry for what he has done, but he keeps returning to the money. Last is, some of the facts he passes off are opinions and I enjoy writers who can be objective in their writing and not force views on the reader, letting them draw there own conclusions. It's an odd take on history, for sure.

Provocative and disturbing book

Required reading for anyone interested in finding reality-based answers to that oft-asked American political question, "Why do they hate us?" Repentant whistleblower Perkins devulges an entire career lifetime of corporate/governmental bad behavior - the kind of stuff that goes a long way toward destroying a country's good name.

From the reviews, it appears that folks either found this book throughtful and provocative or they outright hated it. Dollars to donuts, those who hated it, are the same characters who scream "traitor!" when anyone dares question Uncle Sam's self-appointed economic global authority.

Good book that should be required reading.

eye-opening

Very interesting and fast moving. It makes you think about the foreign policy actions of conservative administrations.

Connect the dots

Great book if you want to better know the empire.