The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

“The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest citizens of health care, education, and other social services for decades to come was not taken into consideration.”

When a small country accepts World Bank loans to pay for modernization, both sides assume the debt will be settled, in part, with money formerly budgeted for health care, education, and the like. For a time, then, the country may slide backward as it tries to modernize.

“[T]he main reason we establish embassies around the world is to serve our own interests, which during the last half of the twentieth century meant creating history’s first truly global empire—a corporate empire supported and driven by the US government.”

In the decades since World War II, most of the great colonial empires have dissolved. America, a beacon of freedom, makes a point of liberating countries; it can hardly assemble its own empire. Instead, the US manages a soft empire of small countries bound by economic dependence. Though this isn’t an empire in the formal sense, it behaves in many ways just like a real one, and in some ways may be the largest ever known.

“I also realized that my college professors had not understood the true nature of macroeconomics: that in many cases helping an economy grow only makes those few people who sit atop the pyramid even richer, while it does nothing for those at the bottom except to push them even lower.”

The main local beneficiaries of this infrastructure development system are the wealthy families who control the small countries involved. They rake huge profits from kickbacks, subcontracting, and loan skimming, diverting government funding for the poor to pay off debt. This makes them even richer, while the poor struggle with reduced government benefits.

“I had lived in the Amazon and had traveled to parts of Java no one else wanted to visit. I had taken a couple of intensive courses aimed at teaching executives the finer points of econometrics, and I told myself that I was part of the new breed of statistically oriented, econometric-worshipping whiz kids that appealed to Robert McNamara, the buttoned-down president of the World Bank, former president of Ford Motor Company, and Perkins Kennedy’s secretary of defense.”

Perkins is not a professional economist; his skills lie in marketing and sales. He knows enough about finance to put together plausible economic growth forecasts for the third-world nations that sign on to the program. Convincing those countries’ leaders is crucial; accuracy is unimportant as long as there is lots of optimistic, McNamara-style data.

“Ultimately, then, I became convinced that we encourage this system because the corporatocracy has convinced us that God has given us the right to place a few of our people at the very top of this capitalist pyramid and to export our system to the entire world.”

There is a good deal of “white man’s burden” snobbery in Perkins’s early self-appraisal. This we’re-better-than-the-world attitude is easy to assume, especially when you bring miraculous technology to struggling poor countries. It’s also tempting to look down on the less fortunate, which makes it easy to take advantage of them.

“I see now that Robert McNamara’s greatest and most sinister contributions to history were to jockey the World Bank into becoming an agent of global empire on a scale never before witnessed and to set a dangerous precedent. His ability to bridge the gaps between the primary components of the corporatocracy would be fine-tuned by his successors.”

McNamara is famous for using deep data analysis to undergird his projects, from improved production at Ford plants to Vietnam war strategy to loans made by international banks to third-world countries. This focus on numbers lulls everyone into a false belief that all is well, when in fact one side of the bargain is getting seriously damaged.

“I understood, of course, that the primary objective here was not the usual—to burden this country with debts it could never repay—but rather to find ways that would assure that a large portion of petrodollars found their way back to the United States. In the process, Saudi Arabia would be drawn in, its economy would become increasingly intertwined with and dependent upon ours, and presumably it would grow more Westernized and therefore more sympathetic to and integrated with our system.”

The United States modified its EHM approach with the Saudis, who are rich from oil production and didn’t need the usual loans or fall into arrears and become a pawn in the US foreign policy game. Instead, the US arranged giant infrastructure projects that reaped lots of Saudi cash, incurred them to a continuing US presence, and made Saudi Arabia more interdependent with the US. The overall purpose was to reduce the chance that the Saudis might instigate yet another oil embargo.

“There seemed little doubt that the 1973 oil embargo—which had initially appeared to be so negative—would end up offering many unexpected gifts to the engineering and construction business, and would help to further pave the road to global empire.”

The US realized that the EHM system could be modified to exploit opportunities in countries that, like Saudi Arabia, have plenty of wealth to spend. Any nation with huge natural resources but poor infrastructure can become the next target.

“Saudi Arabia today is a country of expressways, computers, air-conditioned malls filled with the same glossy shops found in prosperous American suburbs, elegant hotels, fast-food restaurants, satellite television, up-to-date hospitals, high-rise office towers, and amusement parks featuring whirling rides.”

Part of the EHM scheme in Saudi Arabia was to get the Saudis used to the American lifestyle. This, it was hoped, would make inroads into Saudi cultural resistance: when they, too, play video games and drive Cadillacs, they may be more willing to see things the American way.

“I have found that people warm to you very quickly if you open your eyes, ears, and heart to their culture.”

Perkins has a knack for making friends everywhere, and his special concern for the lives and ways of indigenous people give him access where other EHMs might be shut out. The key is his respect for, and interest in, his host’s culture.

“We, who work every day just to survive, swear on the blood of our ancestors that we will never allow dams across our rivers. We are simple Indians and mestizos, but we would rather die than stand by as our land is flooded. We warn our Colombian brothers: stop working for the construction companies.”

Indigenous Amazonians in the late 1970s took up guerrilla action against the oil and engineering companies that altered and damaged their homeland for the sake of electrification in faraway cities. American agents, including Perkins, responded in part by spreading a rumor that the guerrillas are communists.

“The republic offered hope to the world. Its foundation was moral and philosophical rather than materialistic. It was based on concepts of equality and justice for all. But it also could be pragmatic—not merely a utopian dream but also a living, breathing entity. It could make big mistakes, like denying nonlandowners, women, and minorities the right to vote for more than a century. It could open its arms to shelter the downtrodden, then force their children to work under slave-like conditions in its factories.”

The American dream of freedom and equality is vulnerable to human greed and weakness, and the dream has been violated many times in American history. Perkins believes that today’s corporatocracy, with its exploitation and domineering ways, is the latest example of the dream denied.

“Like many of MAIN’s engineers, these workers were blind to the consequences of their actions, convinced that the sweatshops and factories that made shoes and automotive parts for their companies were helping the poor climb out of poverty, instead of simply burying them deeper in a type of slavery reminiscent of medieval manors and Southern plantations.”

Part of Perkins’s job was to convince his staff, as he once was convinced, that they were fighting the good fight and helping people rise out of poverty, when in fact they were establishing a system that exploited the poor in developing countries and benefited only the rich.

“I had been part of the team that crafted the deal of the century, the deal that changed the course of world history but never reached the newspapers. I helped create a covenant that guaranteed continued oil for America, safeguarded the rule of the House of Saud, and assisted in the financing of Osama bin Laden and the protection of international criminals like Uganda’s Idi Amin.”

The US modernization program in Saudi Arabia cemented a political deal that prevented future embargos in exchange for the US looking the other way when the Saudis bankrolled terrorists or sheltered mass-murdering dictators like Idi Amin.

“During the 1980s, young men and women rose up through the ranks of middle management believing that any means was justified by the end: an enhanced bottom line. Global empire was simply a pathway to increased profits.”

The corporatocracy and its death economy evolve increasingly dangerous techniques for world dominance. One of these is the hiring of a younger, more cynical and greedy generation of EHMs who have even fewer qualms than their predecessors.

“We shall never know many of the facts about the invasion, nor shall we know the true extent of the massacre. Richard Cheney, defense secretary at the time, claimed the death toll was between five hundred and six hundred, but human rights observers estimated it at three thousand to five thousand, with another twenty-five thousand left homeless.”

US forces invaded Panama in 1989, and the collateral damage was largely covered up. The extent of this damage remains unknown to the public. President Manuel Noriega, the target, was caught, but relations between the two countries were severely damaged.

“How many decisions—including ones of great historical significance that impact millions of people—are made by men and women who are driven by personal motives rather than by a desire to do the right thing? How many of our top government officials are driven by personal greed instead of national loyalty? How many wars are fought because a president does not want his constituents to perceive him as a wimp?”

In 1989 President George H.W. Bush suffered from a perceived “wimp factor,” and the invasions of Panama and Iraq were carried out at least partly to quell the idea that Bush was wimpy. It’s implied that many wars are started to protect a leader’s ego and reputation.

“Perhaps it had something to do with 9/11, rising oceans, melting glaciers, fear, our feelings of mortality. Make all the dough you can, as soon as you can, and screw everyone else.”

The corporatocracy has become even more rapacious of late because its members sense that their exploitation of nature and its resources is fatally damaging the environment. Instinctively, then, many players in the death economy reach for even more resources on the grounds that life is short and getting shorter by the minute. This cynicism breeds yet more cynicism, and this exploitation breeds even more exploitation, leading toward a death spiral.

“From inflated home mortgages to college loans, it’s all about servitude to debt. Not that homes or a college education are bad. Of course not. The problem is that we all believe we should do anything to achieve the ‘good life.’ Anything for the American dream. Including burying ourselves in debt.”

Americans are succumbing to the corporatocracy’s creed that endless consumerism is good. Buyers overextend themselves and fall into debt until they are ensnared in the endless cycle of interest payments on top of interest payments. In this way, Americans have fallen into the same debt trap as third-world countries under the EHM system.

“I thought about the core tools we EHMs used in my day: false economics that included distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged accounting books; secrecy, deception, threats, bribes, and extortion; false promises that we never intended to honor; and enslavement through debt and fear. These same tools are used today.”

The fraud perpetrated on developing nations has spread to the prosperous West, where the twin tactics of debt and fear used by EHMs are now endemic everywhere. The corporatocracy has extended its tentacles into every corner of global society.

“But drone operators! They don’t risk their lives; they don’t hear the screams of the wounded and dying or witness the suffering of innocent victims. They sit at computer monitors. They aren’t brave. There is nothing heroic about their jobs. Nor is there anything heroic about a nation that inflicts such suffering on other people.”

The jackals of US foreign policy used to display élan and bravery when carrying out orders to overthrow or assassinate local leaders who resist US domination. Today, they simply manipulate a joy stick that causes a faraway drone to detonate in an enemy’s home. There is no risk or honor in this type of warfare. This is a sign of the corporatocracy’s continuing moral degradation.

“China’s expansionism, like that of the United States and the other empires of history, revolves around lending money to countries, plundering their resources, and paralyzing their leaders with fear.”

Though China competes with America for third-world development contracts by offering better deals, the jury is still out on whether China will maintain its relatively honorable dealings or succumb to US-style arrogance and exploitation while building its own economic empire.

“To change the world, all we need to do is inspire consumers to love companies and products that serve life, and to persuade businesspeople that if they want their companies and products to be loved, they must commit to doing just that.”

The future can be one of love and prosperity rather than fear and greed. Companies can join this effort, and many plan to do so, with products and services that enhance well-being, inclusion, and respect for the environment.