Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 320 pages
• Published by: Plume December 27, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0452287081
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0452287082
• Book Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 8.8 ounces

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Hardcover) "Confessions" is at once too good to be true and too vague to be believed. The author apparently had a successful career supporting requests for development loans for major electric utilities projects to the various less developed countries by grossly inflating their projected economic growth. His motivation for doing so was admittedly to keep his job (his boss was fired when he provided more realistic projections) and flourish in a consulting company whose financial success was clearly dependent upon the loans being approved so that their clients could get the lucrative contracts to do the construction work. Nevertheless, Perkins attempts to make what would just be another sordid tale of Enron-style numbers spoofing into a nearly epic story of official U.S. chicanery by alleging that fraud was perpetuated at the request of the American government in order to trap the borrower nations, apparently too ignorant or corrupt to watch out for themselves, into an eternity of economic and political servitude by intentionally burdening them with debts they could not pay. Unfortunately, despite Perkins career as a self-proclaimed "economist", his book is devoid of even a single statistic backing up this claim. Instead, it rests almost solely upon the words of a mysterious "Claudine" - a woman who present herself not as a U.S. government agent, but as a consultant to Perkins's employer - who in a series of secret meetings imbued this revelation to Perkins from on high as it were, much as Gabriel dictated the Qu'ran to Mohammed. To say that this story is hard to believe is to treat it with a respect it is manifestly undeserving. Perkins's main pitch seems to be that his own apparently solid status as an establishment insider is sufficient proof of his own credibility, despite his enthusiastic admissions that made a substantial fortune exagerrating and lieing for a living. Yet Perkins is no McNamara, but a best a midlevel manager in the "corportocracy" he exposes, and his story lacks the abundant details which made true insider accounts, like Phillip Agee's "Inside the Company" so unmistakably authentic and powerful. In fact, it is precisely its quasi-fictional nature, rather like Carlos Castaneda's dubious account of his dealings with Native American shamans, which makes "Confessions" such a good read. It reads like fiction because it basically is fiction, albeit interlaced with enough true events from the author's life and recent history to give it the veneer of plausibility. In the end it is useful mostly for the (few) books it cites in its (sparse) footnotes, which offer some useful insights into some of the lesser known incidents in the history of the American Empire, such as the abortive careers of Omar Torrijos and Jaime Roldos. But it cannot be treated as a serious contribution to the debate on globalization. Comments (25) | | (Report this)