Confessions of an EHM

I just finished reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.

It's hard to comment on a "conspiracy theory" book. If I dismiss it, then the author can say that I'm just falling victim to the conspiracy. If I accept it, then those that don't believe it wil tell me I'm just believing some crazy nut job. Regardless, here are my thoughts.

The basic premise of the book is that Perkins, along with other economic hit men (EHM's), would go into third world countries and convince them to take loans of large sums of money in order to develop their economy. However, the true goal of the EHM was to force these countries into debt, so that they would be able to be held as a political prisoner any time the lendors needed to call in a favor (i.e. for oil, for military base stations, for land use, for business use, etc.). Despite the fact that these loans were made by the World Bank, Perkins claims the money went straight back to the United States, in the form of contracts with companies like Halliburton or Bechtel. The end result, according to Perkins, is that the rich got richer, the poor people in these third world countries stayed poor, and in some cases, become more and more angered with society, sometimes leading them to form militant groups (i.e. terrorist oragnizations). Perkins even goes as far as to make the comparison of the British Empire during the American Revolutionary War to the global economic empire that many militant groups are fighting against today.

There is a lot of criticism about this book, which can be found easily by a web search (or start here).

The first thing I'd mention about this book is that while I do believe much of what Perkins is describing, I don't completely believe Perkins' actual stories. This book was obviously written to sell books (which it has done quite well at), and some of the message gets lost behind that.

With that said, the themes he presents are pretty common themes in a lot of writing lately. There are constant protests against things like globalization and the G8. I find it hard to believe that it's just coincidence that so many people are worrying about a global empire taking over.

At the very least, the book made me think about what it must be like to be in a third world country and to be heavily persuaded by a richer country to do certain things. And while the book might not be the best source of information, it's certainly valuable for kicking off a good discussion.