Confessions of an EHM

Recently finished up Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins. Great book. I found myself using it as Nyquil because political jargon makes me sleepy, but it really did change my life...for about a month...how books do. Poor timing I suppose, with thoughts of farming in the Pyrenees, making soap and living in the hills of Riccia with my family, I don't have the energy to change the world. Maybe when we get back.

Perkins tried several times to publish the book but was bribed and eventually threatened to put a lid on it. The copy that I read was borrowed. Covered in coffee, no sleeve, no title....just a brown, torn up, bound stack of papers which contributed to it's "secrecy." I planned on writing a review, but I found these two excerpts from the book that both define and summarize it entirely. Buying books these days is tough...decisions like "bread...milk...or paperback" are prominent....sooo, honestly, you don't have to go buy the book after checking this out...but I do hope you'll check out JohnPerkins.org (I plan on trying to get to one of his lectures) and reading the prologue next time your in the bookstore...let me know what the cover looks like.

"This is what we EHMs, (Economic Hitmen), do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations 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 favors. 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 New York, Houston or San Francisco."

"Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations who are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principle 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 own 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 or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money and another country is added to our global empire."

Ahhhhh....good ol' USA!