Comments (13)

• Boris Lvin

  I confess that upon reading info provided at http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2006/Feb/02-767147.html I do not think it makes sense to pay any attention to John Perkins's confessions. The list of his other books seems to be particularly revealing.

  Published: December 12, 2006 9:54 AM

• bstender

  while it is simplistic to say that Capitalism is the source of all evil, it is equally simplistic to say that a new Nike plant in an underdeveloped country is a de facto "godsend." While the inhabitants may find the wages marginally superior to their previous opportunities, (paying the lowest possible wage is the purpose of building that factory), those inhabitants are still being raped no less than the citizens of a world bank maneuver.

  the inhabitants now find themselves dependent upon and at the bottom of the food chain of a foreign economic system, trading their indigenous culture and autonomy for a ride on the master's runner board. The moment the capitalist strikes a more favorable deal with a different tinpot ruler, the factory is gone overnight. now they are worse off than before.

  This story and thousands like it are the essence of Capitalism. It is nothing to celebrate, it is merely the basic fact of life that the strong and lucky live high on the backs of the weaker and less fortunate. It is wild nature at work, no more, no less.

  Published: December 12, 2006 10:20 AM

• Joshua Katz

  How exactly can it be that the opening of a factory, and the closing of a factory, both are harmful? You tell us that the inhabitants are being raped when employed at a Nike factory. Yet, if this employment were not preferable to them to their previous employment, the factory would close for lack of customers. You seem to believe that they are entitled to some higher wage or standard of living - why? Americans weren't handed our standard of living, people saved and built it. The third world inhabitant is getting lucky by the spread of some capital from countries that developed it.

  Published: December 12, 2006 11:52 AM

• Paul Edwards

  Good review.

  I recall Perkins near the end of the book concluding that if only the world banks could be made to function more in line with his own views, it could be a constructive instrument for the good of these third world countries. It was amazing to me that after all was said and done, he had still no clue regarding the underlying problems of state capitalism and the impossibility that it can do anything but inflict harm.

  Published: December 12, 2006 2:07 PM

• Bill, why stop now?

  This fraud by the UN, western governments and others has been going on since WW2.(Since that stupid Marshall Plan that everyone touts as a success, especially the Germans, French and British who got free money.)

  My question is why stop now, it has been so successful at making UN and Western Bureaucrats feel superior to those who "contributed" the money in the first place.

  As for the hitman, he is providing a valuable service. He gets the locals to buy into the stupidity of these international organizations and he organizes the bribes and graft to get the less than ethusiastic locals to request the Western goodness by building something that no-one needs or wants.

  Published: December 12, 2006 2:31 PM

• Som

  The fact that Perkins is in econometrics and writes something like this is remarkable in itself. He actually has a logical cause-effect analysis (that is flawed but somewhat coherent) instead of some absurd probability play like "90% chance the debt cannot be repaid in 3 years". Maybe these "government economists" are starting to see through the useless mathematical models they idolized earlier.

  Published: December 12, 2006 2:52 PM

• Jonathan Marshall

  As the State Department website notes, much of this book is fiction. For example, Perkins makes much of Bechtel Corporation's alleged machinations in Panama, based on a conversation he claimed to have had in 1972 with Omar Torrijos, the country's strongman. In that conversation, Torrijos supposedly called George Shultz “Bechtel’s president” (p. 74), but Shultz did not become president of Bechtel until 1975. Similarly, Torrijos would not have claimed that “Bechtel’s loaded with Nixon, Ford, and Bush cronies” (p. 74), since the Ford and Bush administrations came later. Perkins would not been prompted by this alleged 1972 conversation to reflect on the deaths of “Che, Arbenz, Allende" (p. 75), since Chilean President Salvador Allende did not die until 1973. Later in the book, Perkins notes that Torrijos died in a small plane crash in 1981, which "had all the markings of a CIA-orchestrated assassination." Perkins intimates, without offering a shred of evidence for this scurrilous innuendo, that one of the motives was to serve the interests of Bechtel. Perkins ignores the 1987 claim of Noriega's former top deputy, Col. Roberto Diaz Herrera, that Noriega himself had Torrijos killed by planting a bomb on the plane.

  Published: December 12, 2006 4:26 PM

• olmedo

  from what i have read about this book, Perkings seems to me as your average left wing wacko.

  
  however, it is quite certain that there is a perverse "feedback" mechanism between international financial and aid institutions , third world gavernments and croocked contractors.

  it is quite well known that many of the financial aid buroucrats were, formerly, recipient governments buroucrats.

  
  also, it is quite well known that many international agencies technocrats , after they retire, end up as "consultants" for the same projects their intiutions provide money for.

  the list goes on and on.

  probably , this is one of the reason why you find so few libertarians among international aid agencies.

  olmedo

  Published: December 12, 2006 5:11 PM

• P.M.Lawrence

  Even with a Nike factory (a lot better than cash crop production for export), there are potential problem areas. One is the extent to which funny financing has happened, pretty much covered in the article.

  Another is subtler. Other things being equal, production of staples doesn'y go up (with cash crop production, it actually goes down). Sure, the people in the new jobs are better off - but at the expense of moving food from mouth to mouth, so the real have nots at the bottom of the heap end up worse off.

  Of course, this doesn't go wrong if food can be imported as well - but that means institutional and regulatory changes in those countries first. Even if food does get imported to make up the difference, there can be a transitional problem, which is all it takes to push the marginalised over the edge. Looking at the long run doesn't count the ones who don't make it.

  So, the one single change of building factories is a mixed blessing. You need more than that for an unmixed blessing - but that is something you can get if you are careful.

  By the way, Europeans did not get "free" money from Marshall Aid. Europeans had to give up their alternative arrangements, ones that the USA took over to create the very economic hegemony it has been working for so long. For Holland, for example, the price was the East Indies - and they did not pay it willingly. (I am not talking about whether they themselves were right to be there in the first place, only about whether they paid a price.)
  

  Published: December 12, 2006 11:03 PM

• Francisco Torres

  the inhabitants now find themselves dependent upon and at the bottom of the food chain of a foreign economic system [ . . . ]

  Hmmm, begs the question. You readily assume it is the inhabitants that become dependent on some foreign factory, when in fact it is the OTHER way around: it is the company that becomes dependent on foreign labor. The inhabitants were already involved in other things before the construction of the factory. It is the company that has to intice the people to work for it by offering something that presents an advantage over doing other things, so how can you translate that into the terrible things you describe?

  trading their indigenous culture and autonomy for a ride on the master's runner board.

  This is meaningless rethoric. How can a person trade his or her culture and autonomy by working at a shoe factory, for instance? How does that work?

  it is merely the basic fact of life that the strong and lucky live high on the backs of the weaker and less fortunate.

  That would be true in the case of politicians, bstender, since they tax the weak and less fortunate. But companies cannot take labor, they have to BUY it. I do not see how this translates into the terrible things you describe.

  Published: December 13, 2006 10:16 AM

• fernando

  Jonathan Marshall,
  You said:

  "Perkins would not been prompted by this alleged 1972 conversation to reflect on the deaths of “Che, Arbenz, Allende" (p. 75), since Chilean President Salvador Allende did not die until 1973"

  In fact, he acknowledged it:

  "It made me wonder, though . Perhaps ideals do not die, but what about the men behind them? Che, Arbenz, Allende ; the latter was the only one still alive, but for how long? And it raised another question : how would I respond if Torrijos were thrust into the role of martyr?"

  So, he said that Allende WAS STILL alive.

  Published: December 15, 2006 7:37 PM

• Vince Daliessio

  Perkins admittedly is a bit dramatic and expansive in his claims of personal relationships with the actors in his book, but the mechanisms he elucidates are spot on. The evidence is manifest. There is little for the State Department to credibly deny, so it picks on relatively unimportant personal dramatic details.

  The State Department claim that it is actually looking to reduce debt obligations appears to be true on the surface, but is a miasma, and moreover, a self-serving claim.

  And before the Church hearings, the relationships between spook agencies in the government was much more of a matrix than it was in the period surrounding 9/11 and after.

  I don't carry any water for Perkins' claims of government 9/11 conspiracies. But I don't think its relevant.

  Published: December 15, 2006 11:23 PM

• Porter

  A different perspective.

  http://enspyclopedia.blogspot.com/2007/08/confessions-of-economic-hitman-by-john_30.html

  Published: August 29, 2007 10:32 PM