The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is the 2016 sequel to John Perkins’s best-selling Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004), which reveals how American corporations and the US government use major development contracts to control third-world nations. Though autobiographical in nature, The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an easy read with the feel of an adventure or spy novel. The book includes chapters on how Americans can act against the corporate “death economy” and also contains 50 pages of documentation, notes, and an index.

Perkins admits he served as an “economic hit man” to convince leaders of poor countries to accept loans that pay for infrastructure projects, loans that cannot easily be repaid and effectively put those officials in the US government’s pocket. Leaders who resist economic capture are routinely overthrown or assassinated.

The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man updates this story with evidence that US corporations continue to add countries to their economic empire and have recently reached into America itself to corrupt its political and economic leaders.

Part 1 describes John Perkins’s early years and how conflicts with his parents, loneliness in private school, and yearning for the good life make him an ideal candidate for recruitment by the “economic hit man” (EHM) system. While still in college in Boston, Perkins attracts the attention of the NSA, which keeps an eye on him as a potential EHM.

Perkins cuts his teeth as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, where he and his wife work with local brickmakers to improve their business. In the process, Perkins becomes sympathetic to the indigenous people he meets.

Back in Boston, Perkins accepts a position at an engineering firm, MAIN, that prepares economic forecasting and electric power grid design for countries targeted by the EHM system. Perkins is himself targeted by a mysterious woman, Claudine, who seduces him and trains him in the arts of an EHM. He learns that his job will be to create forecasts, always highly optimistic, designed to convince leaders of small countries to accept loans that will pay for infrastructure improvements. Inevitably, these loans bankrupt those countries, which then fall under the control of the United States and its corporations.

Perkins’s first major job is in Indonesia, where the extreme poverty he observes, despite the influx of development money, gives him the sense that something is wrong with the system that employs him. He’s told, though, that his work is part of the fight against communism. That assurance, and the luxurious lifestyle he enjoys as an EHM, keeps him in the fold.

In Part 2 Perkins works in Panama, where he meets and befriends its leader, Omar Torrijos. When the Arab oil embargo causes chaos in the West, the United States brings Saudi Arabia under its wing, and Perkins writes forecasts that help American companies build massive infrastructure projects in that country.

Part 3 details Perkins’s work in Iran and Colombia. Perkins encounters Iranian rebels who make it clear that the shah, an American puppet, is despised by most Iranians. Perkins’s work in Iran is cut short, and he is spirited out of the country just before a revolution topples the shah’s regime. In Colombia, Perkins befriends a Colombian woman, Paula, who helps him as he battles with his conscience about his work as an EHM. In 1980, Perkins quits his job at MAIN.

In Part 4 the Ecuadorian president and Panama’s General Torrijos, both champions of the poor and resisters against oil company domination of their countries, are killed in plane crashes under suspicious circumstances. Perkins realizes that if EHMs such as himself cannot convince these leaders to toe the line, CIA operatives that Perkins refers to as jackals will appear and do their lethal dirty work.

In 1989 the US invades Panama, whose president, Manuel Noriega, is captured. Efforts to add Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein, to the American system fail, and the United States invades Iraq in 1991. Venezuela adopts a socialist system, nationalizing corporations, but the United States is distracted by 9/11, and the Venezuela problem is set aside.

Perkins starts an alternative energy company, IPS, that flourishes. He also accepts a lucrative consulting job in exchange for promising not to write a tell-all book.

Part 5 details recent developments in America’s corporate takeover of the third world. Techniques of domination become more brazen; Perkins himself, after dining with a mysterious “journalist” interested in Perkins’s upcoming tell-all book, barely escapes death from a serious illness. Perkins learns that a failed coup attempt in the Seychelle Islands is a US/corporate scheme. In 2009, Honduran President Zelaya, a thorn in the side of Chiquita Brands and Dole Foods, is overthrown; in 2010, Ecuador’s President Correa barely escapes the same fate.

Perkins finally writes his tell-all. He also decides to become an activist. His work with an Ecuadorean nonprofit, which helps indigenous people resist oil-company incursions in the Amazon, is halted when the nonprofit is expelled from the country.

Perkins’s research convinces him that American corporate interests have become bolder in their efforts to dominate the world, reaching even into the halls of American governance to corrupt and control US politicians. Meanwhile, China becomes the latest entry into the field of third world development projects, offering better deals than the Americans, but Perkins worries that China may itself fall prey to the temptation to dominate the countries to which it loans money.