Reaction Paper: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins recapitulates the past four decades of his life in which he lived four seemingly different lives. Perkins was a deviant in his early years with his friend Farhad and preferred a life of adventure to one of stricture and repetitiveness, dominated by the wishes of his parents. Perkins interviewed with the National Security Agency and ultimately received a job offer; however, he decided to join the Peace Corps instead. He served for a time in Ecuador, before receiving an offer to join Chas. T. Main, Inc. It was at this point when Perkins assumed the title of Economic Hit Man (EHM). His job soon became to “develop forecasts of what might happen…if vast amounts of money were invested in…[a country’s] infrastructure” (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, 96).

Perkins’ first job with MAIN was in Indonesia, where he quickly acclimated to a very comfortable and affluent style of living. He ended up working in a handful of countries over the next 16 or so years, including Panama, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Ecuador. He witnessed the dealings of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, as well as the assassinations of Ecuador’s President Jaime Roldo, and his friend, Panama’s President Omar Torrijos. During this time, Perkins extorted several countries by convincing them to take out enormous loans that they could never repay, and subsequently invest these funds back into the company that Perkins worked for. Eventually the moral implications of what Perkins had been participating in all these years got to him, and he resigned from MAIN in 1980. He had hoped to retire by age 45 with the title of millionaire, but he realized he was a bit shy, financially, of his goal. He soon received a job offer for the Public Service Company of New Hampshire. His salary became triple the amount it was before, however the horrible moral implications of what he was doing did not go away with his new job. He became an expert testifier, speaking under oath about why New Hampshire should invest in his company’s nuclear energy services. While Perkins’ reputation was renowned for credibility, he knew that the exploits he was making with such a fondness were still morally wrong. He was helping a private company achieve something he knew to be wrong or incorrect. Two years later he could no longer bear the burden of lying, and resigned in order to create his own alternative energy company, titled Independent Power Services, Inc. (IPS).

IPS maintained a mission of “developing environmentally beneficial power plants and establishing models to inspire others to do likewise” (Perkins 192). Perkins friends involved in business transactions in the years prior to his founding IPS helped make his company successful in a business where most rival companies fell to pieces. Perkins sold his highly profitable company in 1990 mostly from exhaustion of maintaining such a busy company, but also partly because he wished to move on to aiding other causes. He joined the ranks of the Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation (SWEC) where he continued to provide consulting services, but was, however, paid off to keep quiet and not talk about his work either at MAIN or SWEC.

Eventually, Perkins moved on to work for a while with Amazonian tribes in helping to preserve the rainforest. Through the many novels and papers that he authored or had a hand in writing, Perkins has exposed many of the vices that have and still continue to grip developing countries, as well as the world superpowers who have had a large hand in committing such crimes of morality. The greed that capitalism has incited within American culture is explored, as well as the US government’s determination to maintain a hand of control over a sizable amount of the world. After leaving MAIN, Perkins, until recently, had been paid very large amounts of money to keep quiet his past and the true dealings between countries through inadvertent tactics. The theme of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is that the United States maintains an incredibly powerful influence over many other underdeveloped and developing nations. Perkins has confessed that his job was to entice these nations to engage in structural development projects offered by his company, by taking out huge loans from the United States. In this way, the loans, which were much larger than necessary, incurred serious financial debts upon the countries involved, and profited MAIN and other corporations employing EHMs, to an enormous extent. The events of September 11, 2001 eventually convinced Perkins to come out from hiding, to put aside his bribes and vows to secrecy, and to tell his story to the world in his critically acclaimed novel, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Perkins writes about several issues that the texts for this course also elaborate on. Some of the most obvious and notable include the tie between globalization and economics, nationalism, and international conflicts of interest. Scott Sernau’s Global Problems details some of the inner workings of two of the largest international organizations, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and The World Bank. In reference to the IMF, Sernau laments that in attempting to inspire reform for the better, the IMF’s requirements for funding usually capitulate in ‘the poorest citizens having to bear the brunt of the pain in these policies’ (Global Problems 57). This same concept appears in Perkins’ novel as he asserts that the United States practically dictates almost every action of the IMF and World Bank. While the United States encourages nations to borrow more than they can possibly repay, EHMs make take their commissions, and before not too long, a once potentially successful developing country is ridden with debt that it, in the foreseeable future, will never be able to repay. Perkins examines how the World Bank, in “advocating the deregulation and privatization of water and sewer systems, communications networks, utility grids, and other facilities that up until then had been managed by governments” ultimately expanded the EHM operation by now having a number of new “executives fan out across the planet” performing EHM actions in recruiting and exploiting labor pools and other resources (Perkins 198). Both authors recognize the fallibility of organizations such as the World Bank and IMF in their inability to act independently of the wishes of the world’s most powerful nations, and the incapacity, therefore, for underdeveloped nations to make much real progress in terms of stability.

Sernau comments for a bit on the meaning of nationalism. He cites Saddam Hussein as an excellent example of what it meant to “create a strong…nationalism that was distinct” (Sernau 183). Perkins devotes an entire chapter, titled “An EHM Failure in Iraq,” to lamenting about how Saddam Hussein didn’t take to the EHM scene (Perkins 214). Perkins also details the flipside of these circumstances, writing about how the US invasion of Iraq excited many EHMs because of the instant potential for seemingly endless amounts of work, should the United States defeat Iraq. Ultimately, I believe, it was Iraq’s excess of nationalism that led to Hussein’s decision to invade Kuwait. Why did the US defend Kuwait? It could not let Iraq gain even further control in the region, not just in resources, but in geographic location with regard to politics and the masses of water nearby it. Perkins called Saudi Arabia “a planner’s dream come true;” they considered Iraq the same, and assumed that it would come around after seeing what a dream come true Saudi Arabia really had experienced with the work that US firms had performed there (Perkins 96). The United States and EHMs alike were infuriated with Iraq for not buying into its scheme and befriending each; therefore, it was forced to take defensive action when Iraq threatened to overtake an ally of US.

Jeffrey D. Sachs in “The Development Challenge” produces a wonderful argument as to why the US should increase by a large amount the quantity of funds it contributes each year to foreign aid. Perkins mentions how he believes the correctness of Toinby’s argument that once suppliers—foreign, underdeveloped nations—are exploited long enough, they will rebel. Sachs makes the same argument: “The poorest nations will hold their wealthy counterparts accountable for what they have and have not done to enable the indigent to overcome early death, mass hunger, disease, and extreme poverty” (“The Development Challenge”, Jeffrey D. Sachs, 9). Perkins’ realized early into his career as an EHM, that by inflating his projections for economic growth within countries to values higher than that of his counterparts, he could get ahead in his trade via promotions and, ultimately, larger loans to foreign countries that partake in his company’s business. In order for the world to become a safer, more stable place to live, the exploitation must stop. Erasing, at least partially, the massive debts that countries have incurred against nations like the US, and entities such as the World Bank and IMF, would be a pivotal role in helping to establish the more stable world environment sought by all. Desperation plagues these poor nations who are indebted for what seems like an eternity, and desperate times lead to violence and corruption like never before. Sachs’ outlook and advice, combined with Perkins’ examination of the current state of world affairs and development, have the potential to cure much of the world’s biggest dilemma of unequal distribution of wealth. This brings together the theme that both authors endeavor to convey to their readers—corruption and extortion, whether by the hands of the US government or by EHMs, is wrong and provides the rest of the world no real service.

The author’s psychological point of view of what he was doing seemed to remain consistent throughout the course of the novel. During his first years with MAIN, he laments, “a paroxysm of guilt flashed through me, but I suppressed it” (Perkins 71). It became clear that Perkins did not like the implications of the work he was performing, but felt trapped in a position that he could not easily walk away from. Besides, he reasoned, what he was doing was best for the United States and the nations he worked with, he himself “could become rich, famous, and powerful in one blow” (Perkins 71). I agree that what Perkins did helped certain countries initially, but the eventual debt that he plagued those nations with is a horrible thing. It has helped the United States remain one of the most prosperous nations in the world, but in turn prevented much of the developing world from gaining a foothold on economic stabilization and social development. I also agree with Perkins’ ultimate determination, and the central theme of his novel, that the work of EHMs is wrong and that developing countries are not better off for forever indebting themselves to superpower nations like the US. It was gracious of Perkins to pair with an MIT mathematician in publishing a paper that mathematically proved that what the US was doing to its subsidiary nation-friends was in fact forever indebting them to a point of no return.

I have seen poverty and destruction first hand in places like China, India, and Vietnam, and can honestly say that nothing I have read in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man has surprised me one bit. As is concurrent with the dedication of his novel, I applaud the courage that Perkins’ has displayed in preparing to tell his story. I feel that all EHMs should come out and let their stories be known. Being an EHM is an occupation that I consider to be a crime against humanity, and therefore it should be revealed to the world what these men and the corporations they work for have been doing to the rest of humanity for far too long. The more Americans know about this topic, the easier it will be for them to adopt stances that depose the workings of corporations such as MAIN and SWEC.

Reading this novel has opened my eyes to an entirely new level of corruption that I have never known very much about. Part of me has always wondered what makes the US economy so much more superior to those economies of the rest of the world. Now I understand that by indebting foreign countries who are forced to pay up to 50% of their nominal GDP on repaying debts each year, the US has had a relatively easy time in maintaining its capitalist grip over the countries its plagued. In addition to loans, US companies installed technologies in developing countries that only US firms have the ability to maintain, thereby further indebting these countries by requiring US companies to continue performing work year after year, while still charging ridiculous rates for this work. I think it is imperative that all college students, not just those enrolled in Views From the Third World, read Perkins’ novel, because his work does just what course aims to teach—it offers an insider’s view of what the third world has become plagued with over the years, and allows readers to experience first hand the monopolistic control over these unfortunate foreign economies that the US has come to assume during the last one half century.

Works Cited

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. New York: Penguin Group, 2004.

Sachs, Jeffrey D. “The Development Challenge.” Developing World 16th ed. (2006): 5-10.

Sernau, Scott. Global Problems. Boston: Pearson Education, 2006.