[Oe List ...] Re:Confessions of An Economic Hit Man

[Richard and Maria Maguire]

Hello everyone

Thanks, Roxanna for bringing up the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and 
the actions you are planning.  Thanks, Cynthia for the suggestion of 
listing some main points in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.  Before I 
begin, you can download a transcript of the interview from 
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

John Perkins worked for the management consulting firm Chas. T. Main in 
Boston as chief economist. His main job was to go around the world selling 
large loans to governments in the third world (which have been swamping 
them in debt and interest repayments ever since).  These loans were usually 
tied to the condition of using most of the money to hire US based 
corporations (like Halliburton) for big infrastructure projects.  This 
indebtedness has also been a major force in pushing those countries into 
structuring their economies to do raw materials and cash crops exports, and 
cut spending on health, education and local agriculture.

He realised what he was doing and had a vocational crisis over it but kept 
on, he says, because he liked the "sex, drugs and money.  He began his book 
about 20 years ago, but says he was held back by a combination of threats 
and bribes by his former colleagues.  The destruction of the World Trade 
Center reawakened his conscience, because he realized that the pain and 
anger behind that attack largely resulted from his efforts and others like 
him in the past, which continue into the present.

It seems to me that the book illustrates why the poverty and damage in the 
"developing countries" continues continues, and why it was so difficult for 
the work of organisations like the ICA to get much headway.  There were 
powerful forces wanting something else.  In the light of what he says, it 
was a miracle that local development efforts got as far as they did, and 
continue to grow.

Another aspect of this book is that it describes not only policies of the 
past, but of the present.  Most of the "aid" given for the tsunami by 
governments was loans, and all or nearly all of it of it was tied to 
conditions designed to benefit Western corporations.  We recently were at a 
meeting where the local director of the World Bank reaffirmed that most of 
the "aid" was loans and that these were tied to conditions.  He naturally 
justified the payments to corporations on the basis of the quality of the 
job they could do, and could not say how the local people had any input, 
let alone, decision making power over any of the construction and spending 
of that money in their communities.

On the vocational level, I can imagine that his feeling disturbed about 
what he was doing probably reflects the feelings of a lot of people working 
for these organisations.  As the movie and book "The Corporation" document 
these people do exist, even at the highest levels.  But it is really hard 
for them to make much of a difference because of the structuring of 
corporations through the laws and the wishes of those who run them to make 
their final reason for being to make money for the shareholders, who are 
primarily a very small sector of the population, even in the US.

This book illustrates well many of the structural contradictions of the 
economic overemphasis, as well as the severe limitations of trying to do 
anything about it primarily from within.  It will take a complex effort on 
many fronts, pariticularly the community, the political, and in a 
widespread re-examination of citizens's sense of their reason for being and 
what sort of nationsal policies they want.

Everything he writes is as far as I know true of the policies and practices 
of the Australian government and its big corporations, under both major 
parties.  Reading it was an illustration about why the development funds 
the ICA was able to raise from them dwindled over the years, unless, like 
in Zamboanga they were related to and area of interest to a mining company.

It seems to me that a lot of what he says here is corroborated by other 
people who have investigated the role of the US government and its 
corporations (like David Korten, Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman and many others) 
in creating the current international climate of fear and suffering in many 
countries, which now comes to attacks on democracy at home by those same 
people. He names a lot of names and countries that he dealt with and it's 
well worth reading, even if you just read the interview.

It seems to me that the ICA's traditional emphsis on the necessity of local 
participation, knowledge access and comprehensive action are as important, 
maybe even more important as they ever were.

Kind regards

Richard & Maria




Richard and Maria Maguire, Unfolding Futures Pty Ltd, GPO Box 349, Sydney 
NSW 2001, Australia
Ph (61-2) 9896 3839, Fax (61-2) 9896 3904, mail at unfoldingfutures.net, 
http://www.unfoldingfutures.net
Transforming individuals and organisations toward a future worth living now.