The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

The first edition of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is published in 2004. Early in 2005 a man claiming to be a journalist interviews Perkins over lunch in New York; hours later, Perkins “suffered severe internal bleeding. I lost about half the blood in my body, went into shock, and was rushed to Lenox Hill Hospital” (216). Seventy percent of his large intestine is surgically removed.

Doctors blame the emergency on diverticulitis, but his recent colonoscopy results had merely noted a few diverticula and otherwise had given him a clean bill of health. Perkins never sees the journalist again.

He doesn’t believe in grand conspiracies, but he knows that EHMs engage in small, focused plots. Some aim at the overthrow of national leaders; more recent ones involve trade agreements, tax benefits for the rich, corporate control of countries, and manipulation of the media. These latter operations “took the EHM system far beyond where it had been in the 1970s” (218).

Perkins and his fellow EHMs, trained to fear communism, believe they are fighting the good fight. Today, Americans are taught to “still fear Russia, China, and North Korea, in addition to al-Qaeda and other terrorists” (219). The purpose is still the same: to protect the interests of the