Confessions of an EHM

I can’t sleep and I feel restless. Annoying eh. Must be the cup of coffee I had eight hours ago. And I thought I’ve been making improvements to my sleeping pattern.

Yesterday I finished a great book which Bahri lent me. It’s called ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ and it’s so interesting that I wish I had bought the book myself earlier (the book came out in 2004).

The book mainly focused on how the USA, or more specifically, the ‘corporatocracy’ (as John Perkins put it) has (or had—Obama?) been cheating countries around the world in the name of “foreign aid” of which, in fact, was actually the USA, the corporatocracy, trying to set itself as a global empire. The rest of the book dealt much with how John Perkins was trying to survive his years-long ordeal of trying to get out the mess he got himself deep into.

This corporatocracy did not only include the U.S. government, but major U.S. oil and engineering corporations, the C.I.A. and the N.S.A., as well as the World Bank and the USAID. The way this corporatocracy cheated countries (Indonesia, Ecuador, Iran, Panama, Colombia and Saudi Arabia) was through so-called “foreign aid”, providing individual countries with massive loans to finance the immense potential economic growth projected by the so-called economic hit men (EHM).

But in reality, the corporatocracy knew that these countries were not going to be able to pay off their huge debts (which included interests) and under political pressure from its creditor, the U.S., the countries in debt had to resort to payments in the form of U.N. votes, oil and more. Thus, the U.S. GREATLY benefitted not only from the standpoint of the U.S. oil and engineering companies being paid to work in the indebted countries, but also from the fact that the U.S. were able to strengthen its food and energy security issues.

Where oil seemed to be the major driving force for the corporatocracy’s pursuit of a global empire, the corporatocracy didn’t succeed in countries like Venezuela and Iraq (note that the book was published in 2004), even then, it had major stake in some of history’s most dramatic events: “the fall of the Shah of Iran, the death of Panamanian president Omar Torrijos, and the U.S. invasions of Panama and Iraq.”

Another interesting point: the corporatocracy worked in a way such that the EHM were first in line; if they were to fail, the ‘jackals’ or the real assassins would come in (as such in the cases of ‘accidental deaths’ involved) and if the jackals were to fail too, U.S. warships and army would get their turn.

And the last point to note: the U.S. was one of the sponsors for Osama Bin Laden’s radical, extremist group, i.e. the al-Qaeda. But there was disappointingly no clear link or explanation between this and the 9/11 attack.

If you’ve read (my post) up to this point (which I doubt anyone has, but thank you if you have!), you’ll understand why ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ was such a good read.

P.S. Thanks to Juggernaut for lending the book.