If nothing else this book is a time line of geopolitical/military events that the US was involved with from the 70s through the 2000s.

It was a basic review of the US in Indonesia, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Iran, Saudi and Iraq. It was not an 'eye opener', nor was it sourced very well. His references were journalists - the same journalists that he links to the corporatacracy he so loathes (and blames).

The author illuminates the underground world of the Economic Hit Men that were basically recruited by the NSA to economically infiltrate underdeveloped nations, get them hooked on our loans and keep them hooked, so that the US could 'call on their pound of flesh' - his favorite term - whenever we needed it. This was by no means hard to believe. But the part that was so damn annoying was his droning on about his 'guilt' about the whole thing. For. Thirty. Years. The man loved money, first class travel, ladies and bonuses too much to give up on the horrible behavior he was having such a hard time living with....while sailing on his boat in the British Virgin Islands.

Of course, if you were to believe him, he was also Mr. Popular. In all of the nations he worked in, he was befriended by someone, a local, an insider, someone...they would share with him their struggles - because they trusted him - and he would listen, feeling even more guilty, but putting the plan into action. The plan, to manipulate all of these nations, primarily the indigenous populations whose homes were being lost to land devastation by the large oil companies that were moving in.

He then went on an on about how the average American just couldn't understand it. It was too complex to know that the shit that was going on in South America was not on the up and up. Right. Sure, the NYTimes, LATimes and Washington Post readers are all obtuse Americans that just took the geopolitical and military movements of the US Government at face value. Does everyone pay attention, certainly not, but clearly people in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s were capable of questioning (and many did) the moves of our nation.

And to top it off, not only did he call us stupid for the first 200 pages, he decided to become a complete and utter raging self righteous asshole for the last 20. He lectured the reader about how they basically need to pick up the slack and fix this problem by improving their way of life, becoming green and taking care of the environment. Excuse me? His intermittent apology throughout was vapid, to say the least, but the closing of the book clearly illustrated the mans struggle with reality.

The real kicker - the corporatacracy that he so loathes, yet helped to build - is all of us. He says, on page 217: "It would be great if we could just blame it on a conspiracy, but we cannot. The empire depends on the efficacy of big banks, corporations, and governments - the corporatacracy - but it is not a conspiracy. The corporatacracy is ourselves - we make it happen - which, of course is why most of us find it difficult to stand up and oppose it."

What is this, so new aged mumbo jumbo about how we are to better ourselves? Is he some shaman that tells it like it is, gives us the tough dose of medicine and then wipes his hand of any involvement? It gets better, on page 219, I believe he is comparing himself to Paul Revere when he says: "I thought again of that other man, that lone rider galloping through the dark New England countryside, shouting out his warning." What? What? I guess it's a good thing Revere didn't wait 30 years to warn the patriots.

This man is delusional, not in his assessment of how the US 'supposedly' has acted; but in his culpability. He's all of a sudden contrite and confessional and boom - he's our savior. He even goes on to write: "Now it's your turn. You need to make your own confession."

The author needs to get off his high horse. Some of us, practically all of us, had nothing do with the crap HE perpetuated on millions of indigenous peoples in the name of corporate oil profits.

كتاب يوضح لنا كيف تهيمن امريكا اقتصاديا على دول العالم الثالث عن طريق ايهام تلك الدول بان امريكا سوف تساعدهم لبناء مشروعات وخطط لتنمية للبلد وتلك المساعدات عن طريق ديون وتستغل امريكا الديون لجعل الدول تحت امرها لتستغل مواردها الطبيعية كالبترول او فى حالة التصويت فى الامم المتحدة وجعل تلك الدول تبيعة لهم ولا يمكن ان تتحرر اقتصاديا.....
ويبين ايضا الكتاب كيفية اختلاط المال بالسلطة فى امريكا مثل مكنمار رئيس فورد الذى اصبح وزير دفاع فى عهد كنيدى !!! ثم رئيس البنك الدولى.... وبوش الاب انه احد ملاك شركة يوناتيد فروت العالمية وبسبب تلك الشركة دبرت امريكا انقلاب فى جواتيمالا للاطاحة برئيسها المتخب اربينز .

Ok, so as I finished reading this book, I can say I successfully landed on 3 main conclusions!

Yet, before I share them, let me brief you on what this book talks about. Interestingly enough and as the title suggests, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a real-life story of a person who played a role in reinforcing and mushrooming the system of marching into a global empire of America. Nonetheless, trapped in consciousness, guilt and willingness to save the next generations-as he puts it-Perkins chooses to unveil the truth that many are not aware of.

Economic Hit Man refers to the unofficial title a number of economists who work for big-shots American corporations, and whose role is considered to be double agents for both those commercial corporations and the U.S Administration and specifically the CIA.

The job of those EHMs is to make overestimated-yet-scientifically-proved economic forecasts and statistics to convince 3rd world countries to start investing in their resources and lunch national projects. Those EHMs work for huge American corps. specializing in construction engineering..etc as well as Oil companies. Such a so-called “humane” action initiated by the States is done on a condition that the ones carrying out the national projects should be its own American corps. and companies. Of course with the help of-again-with the U.S humane and financial aid from its World Bank and IMF. The scenario ends with a country that’s drastically in huge debts to the U.S which leaves its –usually corrupt- government to be an official puppet of the U.S allowing the American imperialism to expand further. Such an imperialism would be reflected in U.S military installations that exist everywhere, controling UN votes and many more that result in controlling world economic and political system!

Additionally, Perkins condemns and blames the capitalistic increasing approach-promoted mainly by U.S- which does nothing but leaves the rich much richer and the poor way much poorer; a system that successfuly creates a new form of slavery.

This is a rough idea about what was the major talking of this book; of course the story has many more dimensions.

Now whether the concept of EHM truly exists or not, whether the author was truthful in what he has said or not, any one pays a close attention to the U.S Administration and foreign policy over the past decades he won’t find the content of this book to be surprising! And no ! it’s not a conspiracy-like analysis but a true discloser of the dirty way of getting business done by U.S and its puppet governments elsewhere.

The book is a very interesting read and brings lots of interesting issues and events to the table although reliability sometimes might be questionable.

One of the most parts I liked was the way he looked at the event of 9/11. I personally share his views in this regard.

One thing I didn’t like was the author way of dramatizing things especially when it comes to his past. But truth be told, his writing style is extremely good, and he’s so smart in the way he plays on the reader’s emotions especially the American one, I believe.

Now come to my 3 conclusions that I still didn’t share after all this bla-blaing..

Con#1 : the book is very inspirational read to rebel against corruptive systems and say NO even if those systems are the hands that feed you. Fighting for freedom, equality and humane living is way much worthy than the rewards-or the so-called ones- gotten from turning a blind eye to or serving those corrupts.

Con#2 : we don’t live in a rosy and bubbly world where everyone does everything for the good deeds! Humanitarian aids and support..!! please go wash your face and wake up !! Yet, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories and I believe no one should. The thing is: everyone has his owns hidden agenda that suits his own interests. So, sorry to break the news to you but no one serves the other for the apple of his eyes !

Con#3 : many 3rd world countries had its blood soaked up by the U.S because those countries lacked the needed knowledge, technologies, industrial capabilities..etc where the U.S has it. So no wonder such countries would be trapped in the U.S modern empire as they needed to progress and modernize. I felt utterly depressed; is a gap that until now we couldn’t fill in and until we do, we will be always trapped, dependent and extremely weak.

ياريت دعاتنا اللي فلقونا بوعظهم البائس و تحذيرهم الساذج من "التغريب" والمؤامرات العالمية علينا.. يركزوا طاقاتهم و جهودهم على دعوة المجتمع انو يخرج مهندسين طاقة وعلماء اقتصاد وسياسيين وباحثين في كل العلوم متفوقين في مجالهم واهم من كدا مؤمنين في قدراتهم بإنهم يقدروا يغنوا مجتمعاتهم عن الاستعانة بالخبرات الاجنبية

نحتاج يكون عندنا اكتفاء ذاتي ، نحتاج يكون عندنا خبراء و باحثين محنكين ، واهم من كدا نحتاج يكون عندنا حكومات تثق بالسواعد المحلية !

Wow ! this book triggered A LOT !!!!!

الكتاب غني بالمعلوماتالمثيرة و التي تفسر لك بصدق الكثير مما يحدث في السياسة العالمية

يستحق القراءة ويستحق رغم صغر حجمه و عدم اكاديميته أن يصبح مصدراً هاماً للكثير من المع��ومات عن الشركات متعددة الجنسيات وسلوك الولايات المتحدة الاقتصادي مع العالم الثالث .

(3.0) Had a tough time rating this one, it's informative, but I don't empathize at all with Perkins

On the one hand, I appreciate the insight into many of the actions our (Republican) administrations have made in recent history...that much of it was actually part of an orchestrated strategy of forcing developing nations into indentured servitude to the US and its large (particularly energy and engineering) corporations. Perkins worked for MAIN, an engineering consulting firm, as an economist, making insanely optimistic growth projections for developing nations if they underwent massive infrastructure investment, justifying enormous loans to fund such projects (which were of course given to US corporations such as Bechtel, Halliburton (sound familiar yet?)). The inevitable result was default on the debt and the corruptible heads of state would be beholden to the US government and corporations (think UN votes, trade negotiations etc.). He played a key role in making the whole charade work, so he knew what was going on and thankfully has come forward to share what he did and what he knows.

On the other hand, I found his contriteness unconvincing as he agrees time and again with people trying to convince him that what he and his government are doing is very wrong...yet doesn't change anything. I also felt little sympathy as he was torn between making tons of money and doing the right thing (while on a pristine beach in the Virgin Islands (poor torn soul)). The writing suffers as he tells us time and again how bad he felt about what he was doing and it feels insincere. I almost choked when in the 'what can you do' section, he encouraged people to form a book group and discuss his book...he even provides a link to his personal website. I mean, sheesh.

His writing is bad for other reasons as well. Perhaps because he has been writing the book for over a decade (wrote bits to assuage his guilt, with no intention of publishing for the longest time I suppose), but he has no problem repeating himself (or over using "euphoria", "pound of flesh" and "shackled"). Such as (and this is just the one I happened to track down):

p 84: "Surely, [Torrijos] knew that the foreign aid game was a sham--he had to know. IT existed to make him rich and to shackle his country with debt. It was there so Panama would be forever obligated to the United States and the corporatocracy. It was there to keep Latin America on the path of Manifest Destiny and forever subservient to Washington and Wall Street. I was certain that he knew that the system was based on the assumption that all men in power are corruptible, and that his decision not to use it for his personal benefit would be seen as a threat, a new form of domino that might start a chain reaction and eventually topple the entire system"

p.122: "At the time, I had assumed that Torrijos knew the foreign aid game was there to make him rich while shackling his country with debt. I had been sure he knew that the process was based on the assumption that men in power are corruptible, and that his decision not to seek personal benefit--but rather to use foreign aid to truly help his people--would be seen as a threat that might eventually topple the entire system. The world was watching this man; his actions had ramifications that reached far beyond Panama and would therefore not be taken lightly."

I don’t want to be overly negative, but Confessions of an Economic Hitman really irked me. I was only four or five pages into it before I got the overwhelming feeling of wading knee deep through bullshit. I think I might have been more tolerant if the book had been better written, but it wasn’t. It was cliched, used lame tropes, got treacly and scanned like bad spy fiction. The big problem with taking a bad John le Carre approach is that there were no stakes. “Oh no, he might expose the truth, but he’s got to go yachting…” It seems like the worst consequences he faced was boring consulting positions that paid way too much. “He’s such a rebel he’s willing to risk a comfortable sinecure!”

So, the first thing that tripped my bullshit detector is that he claimed he couldn’t get a publisher (which I believe b/c the prose was so bad) b/c of the content. This is a pretty incredible claim b/c here’s the book and if the powers that be wanted to suppress this book it would have been easy. They allegedly orchestrated the death of two Latin American presidents. If they can kill someone as high profile as Torrijos then how hard would it be to off a semi-nameless exec who goes yachting a lot. If what he’s saying is true, what is more likely from an assassination happy cabal trying to prevent the exposure of their secrets? His boat disappears at sea, no book written, maybe a page 5 obit in the local paper. Or, what he claims happens, he talks about what he’s writing but no one does anything for 15 years and then the CIA (or NSA but we’ll get into that) swings into action and discourages some publishers even though the revelation of these secrets could bring down the whole house of cards? And it’s this kind of dumb crap throughout that made this book totally unbelievable.

The next thing that really bugged me is that he takes on a fake “common man” persona and dumbs down stuff that doesn’t need to be dumbed down. He applies for the Peace Corps and is surprised to learn that Ecuador is in South America and not Africa? This guy had a first rate education (including prestigious prep schools and admission to an ivy league college) and he didn’t learn where Ecuador was? Later he’s in Panama during the 70’s, a time when latin America is on fire with revolutionary fervor, and he’s surprised to hear about refugees from Peru, Honduras, Guatemala, etc. Even though he keeps talking about how he always kept up with this area of the world b/c of his love of Ecuador? You couldn’t turn around in the 70s and 80s without hearing about unrest somewhere in Latin America and how the US or CIA was involved. Why would he cope this attitude? Passages like these felt condescending. I think the condescension gives a clue to the rest of the book. He has so little respect for the reader’s intelligence that he thinks he can pass off even the most unbelievable stories.

My biggest beef is that he makes these insinuations that he worked indirectly for the NSA, but he has no idea of what the NSA does. The NSA and CIA aren’t interchangeable organizations. The NSA is responsible for things like code breaking, communication monitoring and intercepts. The CIA is responsible for infiltration, and the type of subversion he’s talking about in this book. There’s tons of stuff available from the Church Committee that lays out exactly what kinds of illegal activities these two organizations were up to in the time period he’s talking about. He could have figured this out with about ten minutes of googling and some basic research. So, allegedly he’s working as an “EHS” for the NSA which doesn’t do anything like faking economic reports to score IMF money. That’s more along the lines of something the CIA would do. The
NSA do lots of terrible and illegal things, but before 9/11 they didn’t do stuff like this. So, he can’t get his basic intelligence agencies right. This was the point in the book where I almost put it down. I decided to struggle through the rest of it to find out why it was so popular, but it only got worse.

He does the common and racist cliche of “brown people are so wise and spiritual”. He talks about how much the people of the Amazon can teach us. He talks about how he’s the only person in his team to get to know the local Indonesians. He keeps bringing up how he likes to learn the local culture. But then there’s the problem with pretending he’s totally oblivious to what’s going on in the rest of South America when he’s in Panama. In Iran he tells a story about bedouins in Iran (Bedouins are Arab, not Persian.) and camel trails throughout the country (camels aren’t common in Iran, they’re mostly in the southwest corner that abuts Iraq and in the far east). If he knew the basics about these areas he wouldn’t lapse into these cliched tropes. Talk to a Persian, they’re least favorite thing in the world is to be confused with Arabs.

On top of all this he can’t even paint a coherent picture of the conspiracy he’s “exposing.” He claims the US can make all these loans to foreign countries b/c we have a fiat currency, but then immediately goes on to explain why having a fiat currency with a large outstanding debt is a danger. So, these genius created a master plan to loan money that will never be repaid by exposing the US to a debt crisis that will seriously harm, if not destroy, them in the future? This is the dumbest conspiracy ever.

And so we get to my biggest problem with this book. The CIA, the NSA, foreign development, and corporate corruption in the world governments, not just the US, is a serious problem. This kind of dumb conspiracy theory crap makes criticisms of these problems easy to dismiss as quackery. It also delays people from learning about the actual problems.

Do government contractors fluff their estimates and expenses and behave in all sorts of horrific and illegal ways? Yes, just look at Dynacorp’s child prostitution problems and KBR and Halliburton’s war profiteering. But it’s not a big conspiracy, that’s what you get for political contributions. Snowden has exposed the NSA’s data collection, lots of journalists are covering the drone war. These aren’t closely guarded secrets that have remained hidden for the past 50 years. There’s too much corporate influence in government. We have a lot of really bad foreign policy. Just look at how the TPP is being negotiated right now. It’s not a secret conspiracy. Almost all this stuff has been front page news for a while.

The problem isn’t a secret cabal. It’s getting elected officials to do anything about it. This guy didn’t help by misleading well intentioned people and making them sound like kooks.

انتهيت - والحمد لله - من كتاب " الاغتيال الاقتصادي للامم" ل جون بركنز ، وهي سيرة ذاتية لاحد اعضاء الكوربراتية العالمية

ملاحظات عامة:
1- الكتاب سيرة ذاتية تمتد منذ اواخر الستينات وحتي بداية الالفية
2- الكاتب عمل خبيرا اقتصاديا في احد الشركات الامريكية مما سمح له طبقا لخبراته ان يضطلع ويشارك في بناء النظام العالمي الجديد وما يعرف بالكوربراتية الدولية
3- الكتاب ينقسم لثلاث اقسام كبري ، الاول ما شاهده جون بركنز بنفسه وعاصره كاحد الفاعلين في النظام ، الثاني ما عاصره جون بركنز من مسافة ابعد قليلا كاحد اصحاب الشركات ومستشار لاحدي الشركات الكبري ، الثالث مشاهداته وتحليلاته طبقا لخبراته ومعارفه دون مشاركة فعلية في الاحداث

ملاحظات شخصية :
1- الكتاب مهم بشكل عام وبخاصة لمن لم يقرا قبل ذلك عن الكوربراتية والشركات عابرة القومية والامبراطورية الامريكية
2- كونه سيرة ذاتية يعطيه حيوية انسانية ومصداقية خاصة انه به كم مراجع كبير ، ولكن تنقص منه العلمية والدقه بحيث يظل في نهاية الامر سيرة ذاتية
3- الكتاب يقدم فلسفة الاغتيال الاقتصادي وهي في نظري اهم من سرد تفاصيل ومعلومات واحداث تاريخية ولكنه لا يغني بالتاكيد عن زيادة التعمق في الموضوع
4- الكتاب يتناول فترة تاريخية قديمه نوعا ما ومن ثم فهو بحاجه لتكلمته بكتاب اخر يهتم بما حدث بعد ذلك ، ففترة عمل جون بركنز كقرصان اقتصادي انتهت سنة 80
5- لي ملاحظه حول الكاتب نفسه والذي طالما ذكر انه اراد التطهر من اثامه من خلال هذه الاعترافات، ولكن يجب ان نلاحظ انه نشر الكتاب فعليا سنة 2003-2004 وهو ما يعني ان ما ذكره قد مر عليه ما يزيد عن العشرين عاما مما يجعل تكفيره باعترافه هو امر نوعا ما ساذجا بقدر كبير
6- علي المستوي الشخصي لم استفد منه بالقدر الذي كنت اتوقعه نظرا لسابق قراءتي في هذا الموضوع وخاصة كتب روجيه جارودي
7- الفصل الاخير جيد بشكل عام وفكرته لطيفه بحيث يصبح الكتاب تحريضا مباشرا علي المقاومة والفعل وان كنت اود ان اشير الي عبثية قول المؤلف بان المشكلة ليست في النظام وانما في سوء استخدامه ، فمازال الكاتب اسيرا لمعتقداته وافكاره القديمه

كتاب " الاغتيال الاقتصادي للامم : اعترافات قرصان اقتصادي " تاليف جون بركنز ترجمة مصطفي الطناني وعاطف معتمد ، تقديم شريف دولار ، دار الطناني للنشر ، 275 صفحة قطع كبير ، 40 جنيه
ملحوظه : هناك طبعه جديده من الهيئة العامة للكتاب بثمن يقترب من عشر هذا المبلغ

أزعم أن هذا الكتاب مع بعض كتب أخرى شكلوا نقطة تحول شديدة الأهمية في نوعية قراءاتي وأسلوب تفكيري ورؤيتي للأمور.
تاريخ قراءته لا أتذكره بالضبط، لكنه يدور حول عام انهيار الربيع العربي 2013 قبله بقليل أو بعده بقليل .

Perkins enlightens us on how he (and others) on behalf of large corporations and the United States government have worked a gigantic confidence game on many of the world's developing nations. Their actions have encouraged oligarchy and stifled democracy on most continents and bode ill for the future.

The con involves: finding the particular need for improvement of quality of life (more employment, rural electrification, markets for agricultural products, etc.); create a plausible way in which an infusion of money will make a difference; find (bribe, cajole, bamboozle) local advocates for this; provide gigantic loans to their government to "make it happen;" require that the money be spent on substantially on products or services supplied almost exclusively by the United States government or U.S. corporations; and, while certain companies and local individuals get rich, the country finds it impossible to ever get out of debt. Then, repeat in another location.

After expounding on this premise, Perkins takes us through many a "con" that he was part of. The variations are less interesting as time goes on and the pattern becomes morally burdensome. One of the chapters that I found m most interesting was about big oil and the rain forests in Ecuador. I was familiar with the court case litigating the damages done by Chevron during the exploration and production of oil (and Perkins alleges much that was not proved in that case). What caught my interest was that this marked a moral turning point for him and that, as he interacted with locals from the remote jungle towns, he found native peoples more conversant on world events than the majority of Americans.

Even if the prose is at times over the top, reading these Confessions should serve as a foundation for an interesting and, with luck, productive discussion.

This book got 5 stars because it is highly disturbing and everyone especially Americans should read this book. Perkins writes his true story of what he did when he was an economic hit man. The basic gist is that he went to other countries promising the growth of their economy if they contracted engineers and workers from the States to install infrastructures such as electricity and running water. It looks like a great idea to the government because they are "helping" their people by creating a better economy. In the long run, the rich get richer (the very few rich of course.) and the poor get poorer (lots of poor people.) As well, the country becomes indebted to the companies that helped install the infrastructures and are at the United States' mercy. Perkins didn't work for the government but essentially did. Most people know at this point that the US government is tied so closely to big business.

There are things that Perkins did that are disgusting and totally unethical and finally his guilty conscience got to him so he wrote the book. Good thing because it is an eye opener and brings some light to one of the many reasons other countries are not to fond of the US. He gives us some tips and some things we can do to combat the mess he has made. One of the actions is stop giving big business our business. I think most people know that big businesses are pretty evil for the most part. The worst thing we can do is just sit idly by and continue living in ignorance. Worse yet, sitting idly by with the knowledge that is out there.

Read the book. Be disgusted. Erase your ignorance. Do something.

Could’ve been a good critique on globalization and imperialism but literally the most self-indulgent, chauvinistic, misogynistic narrator who’s complicit in the corporotocracy he claims to hate

الكتاب يتكلم عن الأساليب الاستعمارية الجديدة التي اتبعتها الولايات المتحدة في الهيمنة على موارد وثروات الدول النامية وذلك عن طريق خداع هذه الدول بصفقات بناء البنى التحتية ومحطات الطاقة والمياه ثم اثقالها بالديون واغراقها بالمشكلات المالية ثم ابتزازها سياسيا والسيطرة على مواردها وقرارها ..

الكتاب مهم وفيه حقائق كثيرة عن كثير من الالاعيب التي حصلت في كثير من الدول العربية ودول أمريكا الجنوبية .. أسلوب الكاتب في سرد قصته ممتع وبعيد عن النمطية التي تشوب مثل هذه الكتب .. إلا أن الكتاب لا يخلو من تعزيز لنظرية المؤامرة بشكل أو بآخر ويجعلك محبطا من اي امكانية في احداث تغيير في شكل المنظومة العالمية ، اذ يصورها على انها مهيمنة بشكل تام ومتقن وخالي من اي ثغرات ..