Must see: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

[rman]

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
Democracy Now!
Tuesday, November 9th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251
(video, audio, transcript)

We speak with John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies.

...

JOHN PERKINS: Basically what we were trained to do (...) (is) to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful. We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.

...

The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we're going to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we’ve put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that. I believe the World Bank and other institutions can be turned around and do what they were originally intended to do, which is help reconstruct devastated parts of the world. Help -- genuinely help poor people. There are twenty-four thousand people starving to death every day. We can change that.

(more)

[ewagner]

1. Interesting...except....

he has his own dicrediting information built in.....re: addicted to sex, drugs and money.....he will be discredited very quickly.

[rman]

3. not addicted to, but bribed

though that's probably how it will be spun; "addicted".

[On the Road]

2. Confirms What Joel Stiglitz Has Written About

plus the author was one of the books on the ground, not an economist at HQ.

The methodology is pretty well known by now. Hard to get enough political momentum to reverse it.