The economic hit men

Najma Sadeque

 

In late 2004, an unusual book appeared in the US. It was written by an economist and business management expert, but it was nothing about text-book economics and business. Far from it. It was about breaking all the rules for good business and economics but becoming fabulously wealthy anyway. It was an autobiography - since the writer was a key perpetuator - but also an expose about the global dirty tricks of the past four decades of the unaccountable government within the government in whose pay he was.
The book was also a confession, because rather late in life, he one day suddenly faced up to the enormity of his inexcusable actions after viewing the consequences of the strategies of those he served. He had been too immersed too long in the heady rewards for what he did that included all that most believed only existed in James Bond and similar novels and movies. He did have occasional twinges of conscience and as many as four different occasions he would start writing his expose for publication, but he also had a big mouth and talked about what he wanted to do to a few key people so that each time he would be heavily bribed not to do it. On one occasion he was given half a million dollars and a paid position that required him to do no work. It came from his previous employer; the private engineering-consulting firm which worked abroad for the US government and later, closed down and re-emerged under a new name. But on that fateful September 11, something drove him to the site of the smouldering remains of the World Trade Tower with unknown thousands buried under the heap.
After that there was no turning back. The economist-turned-writer's name was John Perkins. Since he wanted the book to be read widely, including by ordinary citizens who mistakenly believed that their country was the greatest bastion of democracy, he wrote it in the style of a novel. It was called "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man". Once it was complete, though, he had difficulty finding a publisher. The truth written up in black and white seemed to implicate too many, too far and wide, including those who did not know their actions were being used for what was illegitimate and in violation of all international laws and human rights. He himself approached a top publishing house; but it was owned by a major international corporation, and they didn't want people reading such material that would make any and every company working in foreign countries, suspect, even if they were innocent. He was asked to fictionalise it, but he refused, because that would be defeating his objective.
Finally, it was a small, family-owned publishing house, Berret-Koehler, that courageously came to the rescue. But the hurdles didn't end with its printing. To be read, people had to know about its existence, which came mainly through book reviews. But the mainstream American press which is entirely corporate-owned, would not touch it. However, the alternative, smaller media did; so did activist groups working for economic justice and democracy that made full use of the Internet - and word of it spread. Within months 150,000 copies were sold and went into several reprints to become a best-seller; even the leading American newspapers could no longer ignore it, appearing as it did in over twenty best-selling lists, which in spurred greater sales. It was to shock most readers.
What exactly an 'economic hit man' - or EHM for short - is best defined in Perkin's own words - "Economic hit men are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder."
In other words, the aggressors - whether corporations or superpower or both - have become more sophisticated in their methods. They do not start off with intimidation by military force or private armies - that is the final stage when all else fails. Instead well-educated, intelligent but greedy and corruptible professionals are used. That included justifying World Bank loans channelising money into the pockets of huge U.S. contractors (which included the notorious Bechtel and Halliburton companies in which the Bush father-and-son have personal stakes). It also included making false, highly-inflated economic forecasts to build unnecessarily huge and excessively expensive projects that countries would supposedly benefit from - funded by the World Bank - and which weak governments were forced to accept because they came from 'foreign experts'.
"We build a global empire," writes Perkins, "We are an elite group of men and women who utilise international financial organisations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favours. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in NY, Houston, or San Francisco."
"Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money and another country is added to our global empire."
But that is exactly what activists and independent academics (including some who have resigned in outraged from the World Bank and IMF) and civil society organisations have been saying all along! That's what urban protestors and peasant movements all over the world have been asking their governments to recognise. That's a major part of what their anger was about at the WTO meetings in Seattle, in Cancun, in Doha, and most recently in Hong Kong; not because they were among a disgruntled, incompetent minority who were resentful because they were not successful and wanted ready-made benefits from the state, as the mainstream media made them out to be.
Their message was that if a country was prevented from being owner of its own natural resources and had no control over how it's economy was run, and was being controlled from outside, how could citizens benefit? Whichever country the US got involved in invariably ended in poverty, hunger, devastation and decline. In reality, World Bank, IMF and the WTO were all creatures of the United States and the major American corporations that did not just determine who would get loans and who would do business with which country; loans were a policy that were perpetuated to keep countries in a state of permanent debt and dependency so that investors could exploit with impunity until there was nothing left, and the country would be abandoned. Perkin writes:
"The subtlety of this modern empire building puts the Roman centurions, the Spanish conquistadors, and the 18th and 19th-century European colonial powers to shame. We 'EHMs' are crafty; we learned from history. Today we do not carry swords. We do not wear armour or clothes that set us apart. In countries like Ecuador, Nigeria, and Indonesia, we dress like local schoolteachers and shop owners. In Washington and Paris, we look like government bureaucrats and bankers. We appear humble, normal. We visit project sites and stroll through impoverished villages. We profess altruism, talk with local papers about the wonderful humanitarian things we are doing. We cover the conference tables of government committees with our spreadsheets and financial projections, and we lecture at the Harvard Business School about the miracles of Macro- economics. We are on the record, in the open. Or so we portray ourselves and so are we accepted. It is how the system works. We seldom resort to anything illegal because the system itself is built on subterfuge, and the system is by definition legitimate."
"However, and this is a very large caveat, if we fail, an even more sinister breed steps in, ones we 'EHMs' refer to as the jackals, men who trace their heritage directly to those earlier empires. The jackals are always there, lurking in the shadows. When they emerge, heads of state are overthrown or die in violent accidents. And if by chance the jackals fail, as they failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, then the old models re-surface. When the jackals fail, young Americans are sent in to kill and to die." Echoes of Iraq and Afghanistan?
Perkins operated in all the resource-rich countries, as well as those that were strategically important for the US - among them, Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Columbia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. For the layman, and especially for those who are not into reading many books, Perkins' narrative lays out a frightening clear and easy-to-understand picture of how institutions without conscience or humanity, operate in the global arena under the guise of banking, trade and investment.
Preparing Perkins was not done in a hurry but part of a long-term, well-crafted plan. He was recruited in the late sixties when he was still a student in business school, by the National Security Agency which he says is far larger than the CIA. In a radio interview on the activist-run American radio and Internet media run, 'Democracy Now!', Perkins described :
"They (the National Security Agency) ran me through a series of tests - personality tests, lie detector tests - very sensitive barrage of testing. And during that process, they discovered that I would be a great candidate for an economic hit man…. I have weaknesses that are pretty typical of our culture, the three big drugs of our culture: money, power and sex. And they discovered these weaknesses in me…. Then they encouraged me to go into the Peace Corps. I lived in Ecuador for three years as a Peace Corps volunteer with indigenous people there, who today are at war with the oil companies. We were starting that process then, so I got some very good on-the-job training, so to speak ….. When I got out of the Peace Corps, I went to work for (the recruiter's) company in Boston, Charles T. Main, and went through an extensive training programme there with a remarkable woman ….. she was extremely intelligent, extremely sharp, extremely seductive. She benefited from all the tests that I'd gone through, knew my weaknesses ….. she, first of all, hooked me into becoming an economic hit man and at the same time, warned me that this is a very dirty business and you must be completely committed to it or you shouldn't take your first assignment."
"Well, really, over the past 30 to 40 years, we economic hit men have created the largest global empire in the history of the world. And we do this, typically - well, there are many ways to do it, but a typical one is that we identify a Third World country that has resources, which we covet. In any case, we go to that Third World country and we arrange a huge loan from the international lending community; usually the World Bank leads that process. So, let's say we give this Third World country a loan of $1 billion. One of the conditions of that loan is that the majority of it, roughly 90%, comes back to the United States to one of our big corporations. And those corporations build in this Third World country large power plants, highways, ports, or industrial parks - big infrastructure projects that basically serve the very rich in those countries. The poor people in those countries and the middle class suffer; they don't benefit from these loans, they don't benefit from the projects. In fact, often their social services have to be severely curtailed in the process of paying off the debt. Now what also happens is that this Third World country then is saddled with a huge debt that it can't possibly repay".
"For example, today, Ecuador's foreign debt, as a result of the economic hit man, is equal to roughly 50% per cent of its national budget. It cannot possibly repay this debt, as is the case with so many Third World countries. So, now we go back to those countries and say, look, you borrowed all this money from us, and you owe us this money, you can't repay your debts, so give our oil companies your oil at very cheap costs. And in the case of many of these countries, that means destroying their (environment) and destroying their indigenous cultures. That's what we're doing today around the world, and we've been doing it - it began shortly after the end of World War II. It has been building up over time until today where it's really reached mammoth proportions where we control most of the resources of the world."
But 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man' isn't just meant to be read by the minority of activists and concerned citizens. It is the business and industrial communities of developing countries who hold the key to resistance by deciding whether they want to become dispensable pawns - because no one is safe once one's purpose has been served - or whether they want to work legitimately in their own company and country. The book came to Pakistan but was not promoted as a 'must-read.' It has already become recommended reading for activists worldwide. It should be the same for people in commerce. The details are chilling which brings the thought: "This could happen to me too. Better read late than never".