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The many truths behind the many evils

Farida Shaikh finds a book stunningly revealing
JOHN Perkins was an EHM. This is the true story of a professional who lived every minute of his life. It is about what he saw, the people, the conversation and above all the feelings.
It is Perkins' story accurately created through published documents, personal records and notes, recollections and several dialogues. He describes how as a highly paid professional he helped the US cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies.
Economic Hit Men are handsomely paid. They are cheats and robbers. They funnel money from the World Bank, USAID and other aid organizations into the coffers of giant corporations and a few wealthy families who control the world's natural resources.
The tools of the EHM are fraudulent financial reports, rigged election payoff, extortion, sex and murder. They play an old game with new dimensions in the context of globalization.
A country like Ecuador needed over fifty percent of its national budget to pay off its debt, which it really couldn’t do. So, the EHM literally had it over a barrel. When
the US wanted more oil, EHM went to Ecuador and said, "Look, you're not able to repay your debts, therefore give US oil companies your Amazon rain forests, which are filled with oil." Then the US went in and destroyed Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to it because they had accumulated all this debt.
Officially John Perkins was a chief economist and was doing things that Robert McNamara liked. As a team they called themselves EHM,short for Economic Hit Men, a tongue in cheek term. In the early seventies OPEC, to retain power of dependency and control over the Saudi situation, had the Treasury Department hire Perkins and other EHM to go to Saudi Arabia and strike a deal; they worked in a manner that led to the Royal House of Saud agreeing to invest in securities most of their petro-dollars back to the US. This also dispelled the fear that the US was facing another 1929-type ofcrash —- the depression.
The Treasury Department used the interest from these securities to hire American companies to build new infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud agreed to maintain the oil price within acceptable limits to the US. This was done over the years;
billions of Saudi Arabian petrodollars were funneled back into the US economy, further cementing the intimate relationship between the House of Saud and successive US administrations.
The EHM were assigned to implement the same policy in Iraq. Saddam Hussain refused to buy this deal, and the Economic Hit Men failed in their mission. The Jackals, CIA-sanctioned
people, stepped in to try to fuel a coup or revolution or assassination. They failed. Saddam Hussein's bodyguards were too good.
Basically the Economic Hit Men were trained in the job of building up the American Empire. This was done by creating situations where as many resources as possible flowed into US corporations and government. This empire, unlike any other in the history of tire world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into a prescribed way of life, through economic hit men. Perkins was very much a part of this empire building.
Most funds for the operation of the EHM were provided by The World Bank and the IMF. Perkins felt were the direct result of what the EHM were doing, and the story had to be told. To feel good and secure the US needed to use the system to create positive changes around the world. It is possible for the WB and other institutions to start supporting reconstruction of devastated parts of the world help genuine poor people eliminate death due to starvation.
The first real Economic Hit Man was back in the early 1950s. It
was Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy, who overthrew the Mossadegh government in Iran. Roosevelt was successful. The CIA restored the Shah on his throne.
At that point, the US understood that this idea of Economic Hit Man was an extremely good one. There wasn't any worry about the threat of war with Russia when situations were handled in this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a CIA agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, the US would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the CIA and NSA to recruit potential EHM like Perkins and then send them to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if they were caught there would be no connection with the government
The book in four parts, covering a period of more than forty years, is not prescriptive. It is a personal story, the confessions of a man who allowed himself to become a pawn, an economic hit man because it offered so many perks.
Farida Shaikh is a critic and takes interest in development issues.