63 pages • 2 hours read
John PerkinsThe New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Corporatocracy’s Quest for Dominance
“Corporatocracy” is Perkins’s name for the combined efforts of the US government and American corporations to dominate and exploit third-world countries through a program of debt and fear.
The debt comes from loans granted to developing nations to pay for extensive infrastructure improvements; the fear comes when those countries, swamped by onerous debt payments, finally default, and American agents force them to accept draconian terms or suffer violent reprisals. The United States compels the countries to permit further exploitation, accept American military bases, and vote as instructed in the United Nations.
As developing countries are bound to the United States through debt and economic dependence, they become yet another piece in “history’s first truly global empire—a corporate empire supported and driven by the US government” (28). Though it is not a true imperial unit, this soft empire functions much like one, with the system enriching corporations and a few wealthy families in each developing country while hamstringing the local poor, whose public services, health care, and education are often sacrificed to pay off the loans.
Chief among the perpetrators of this scheme are “economic hit men,” including Perkins, who present overly optimistic economic forecasts that promote development projects for each country, which helps convince local officials to sign off on the huge loans such projects require.
As the development projects unfold and the loans become harder to pay, some local leaders may balk at the entrapment. If they resist, the “jackals” are brought in to enforce compliance, sometimes by overthrowing the officials or, if necessary, by assassinating them.
Perkins believes the corporatocracy has lately extended its reach into America, bribing and threatening government officials into favoring corporate interests.
The Conflict Between Greed and Compassion
As an economic hit man, Perkins is haunted by concerns that his work with developing nations does more harm than good. He knows his job is to cheat local governments, but he also knows that America greatly fears the global expansion of communism and wants to stop it wherever it can, in part through the efforts of agents like Perkins. The corporatocracy, dirty though it may be, is the main system for accomplishing US foreign policy goals in the developing world. Perkins also enjoys large paychecks and a posh lifestyle filled with international adventure; these perks lure him back into the fold whenever his conscience balks.
Perkins vacillates about this dilemma. He tries to assuage his conscience by learning about and sympathizing with locals and indigenous people. This makes little difference to the demands of his work life, however, which compels him to continue selling regional leaders on the purported merits of the development programs he hawks. At one point Perkins achieves a sort of compromise through his friendship with Panama’s Omar Torrijos, who repays Perkins’s honest economic forecasts with plenty of development work for Perkins’s company.
Though Perkins wants to do good in the world, and though his moral quandary is understandable, his attempts to excuse his work by insisting he is fighting communism make him as naive as the third-world leaders he manipulates. This leads to his eventual realization that every player in the EHM system is enticed by its greed-based death economy. This scheme tempts all sides.
It requires the unstinting efforts of Perkins’s Colombian friend Paula to convince Perkins that he must walk away from his economic hit man role and assume a new life as an activist. Perkins starts an alternate energy company, writes books, creates foundations to promote the interests of indigenous Amazonians, and finally pens a tell-all autobiography and its sequel, The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Perkins hopes that people and corporations alike will resolve the conflict between greed and equality by abandoning attitudes steeped in scarcity and fear for ones founded on abundance and love.
The Need for Life-affirming Transformation
The corporatocracy chugs forward relentlessly, gathering steam as it hurtles toward total world domination. Its motive is greed, its method is debt and fear, and it seems unstoppable. Yet the corporatocracy contains a fatal flaw: Its program destroys everything, even those enriched by the economic hit man system—or, as Perkins also puts it, the “death economy.”
This destruction comes about largely through the degradation of the environment. The biggest corporate interests in the death economy, the oil companies, generate pollution on a global scale. The other corporations, with their endless construction projects, dam up rivers, tear down forests, and promote mass consumerism, which all take a heavy toll on natural resources.
Democracy, demonstrations, protests, and rebellions have failed to slow the death economy’s march. Masses of people are fed up with this relentless process, and a growing number of corporate CEOs want to refocus their firms from mindless consumer mongering to conservation, creative solutions, and respect for all peoples. Perkins offers an action plan based on love for others, a passion for vital work, and a willingness to join hands in community efforts.
