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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: The Shocking Story of How America Really Took Over the World | 
 enlarge | Author: John Perkins
Publisher: Ebury Press
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £2.96
You Save: £5.03 (63%)
New (34) Used (9) from £2.96
Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 1447
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0091909104
EAN: 9780091909109
ASIN: 0091909104
Publication Date: February 2, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Unbelievable Nonsense - I think not!! July 17, 2008
A. M. de Nysschen (United Kingdom)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm not quite sure what to think of this book. Why? I recently read a book titled 'Great Controversy' by White. It was written about a hundred years before John Perkins wrote this book. Now, the two books are worlds apart, until you come towards the end of White's book, (and you sure have to hang in there and read the whole book), then all of a sudden, Perkins starts to make sense. John Perkins does well in this book! It's more of an overview ... an itroduction to EHM's. If you first read White and then Perkins, you have to admit that perkins hits the nail on the head - or was it White?. But just on it's own this book is a brilliant read. I like it and unless you are 'one of them' you will enjoy it too.
 Interesting but far too much sensationalism June 16, 2008
A. Newell (London, UK)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A good read but Perkins spoils it by going over the top with political rhetoric. The book would have been a lot more effective in getting his intended message accross if he allowed his experience to speak for itself rather attempting to direct us how to think.
Despite this, when Perkins stops preaching and self-promoting (you do actually wonder whether he was as important to the whole process as he professes) there are some fascinating stories, it's just a shame that he chooses to interdisperse theses with streams of consciousness and directions such as to "consume less oil".
Confession it is.... January 2, 2008
Mr. M. G. Smith (United Kingdom)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
An integral part of foreign policy is obviously economic ambition.
So, i figured this book may give a reasonable insight coming from the horses mouth, however, it is just that..reasonable and no more. It lacked indepth, specific details (there may well be good reasons for this) and seems to merely touch the surface. Far too much emphasis on Perkins` guilt although he always seemed to manage to deal with it for a few more years! People reading this really wont care too much with his personal struggle but then to be fair to Perkins..it is in the title!
Its a good first book which is easy to read and can help to assist being far more critical when reading other material.
I would recommend this but dont expect too much, and if you well advanced in the economic chess game of the world i`d give it a miss.
Personal account of corporate skullduggery October 18, 2007
Mr. Tristan Martin (Cambridge, UK)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a personal account of one man's moral awakening, set against a background of international high finance. The author, John M. Perkins, was a consultant for a consulting company that specialised in `assisting less developed countries to achieve their economic growth potential.' In reality, this involved saddling already impoverished populations with further debt that would cripple future generations. This book, though, is not a dry volume of econometrics or development studies but rather a personal journey from amoral corporate executive shill to a man who rediscovers his essential humanity.
Confessions... follows John Perkins career at Chas T. Main, Inc. (MAIN), and his involvement in such countries as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Panama and Indonesia. Crudely put, Perkins' job required him to undertake studies to prove that country X is on the cusp of an economic boom due to underexploited natural resources but that in order to achieve predicted growth rates of twenty per cent per year for the next five years, the country would require electricity generation stations and accompanying infrastructure (roads, hospitals et cetera) and accommodation for all the construction workers (these economic forecasts were deliberately and grossly exaggerated - low/accurate predictions would lead to less profit for MAIN and possibly even loss of one's job).
Once the World Bank signed off on the forecast, massive loans would be made to the government of country X so that it could afford to undertake such substantial projects. However, when Perkins' economic prophesies fell (far) short, the development firms would vacate and the populations of the countries involved would be left to make the debt repayments; their taxes now being used by the government to finance the interest on the loans, often not the capital itself, instead of investment in schools, healthcare and so forth.
These schemes often involved a transfer of funds from the World Bank to construction and consulting companies like Bechtel, Halliburton and MAIN. In essence, this was a gift from the taxpayer to the corporations, a welfare state for the super-rich, with the money never actually leaving the United States but being transferred directly from the accounts of the World Bank to the accounts of one of the above-mentioned firms (or others).
To quote from the book: "The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world's population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest countries went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995. And the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the IMF [International Monetary Fund], and the rest of the banks, corporations, and governments involved in international "aid" continue to tell us that they are doing their jobs, that progress has been made."
John Perkins (whose papers are still referenced in PhD economic classrooms) was instrumental in such corporate deceit; the more he lied, the more he was rewarded for his skills of consulting and persuasion. What Confessions of an Economic Hit Man relates is how one man woke from his dogmatic slumber, how a life of private corporate jets and five star hotels, huge salaries and exotic locations lost its allure when weighed against the social and environmental legacy that he was bequeathing to his daughter and to the planet as a whole. This is where the book is on its strongest footing, with the personal account. Where it is at its weakest, is on the mechanical details; exactly how Perkins achieved such feats of deception is never fully explained.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an easy read, written in a loose, intimate style, more reminiscent of an espionage thriller than a book covering parallel material, such as Joseph Stiglitz's Globalisation and its Discontents. Get Perkins' book for the first-person perspective, get Stiglitz's book for the reform agenda and the academic interpretations of what's gone wrong. Taken together, these two books compliment each other commendably; for details of corporate deception and intrigue, John Perkins' testimony lacks sufficient minutiae but as a narrative of individual corruption, self-justification and ultimately, enlightenment - and which it should be read as such - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a success.
A book to start the naive thinking! August 27, 2007
Mark A. Warmington (West Midlands, UK)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am not sure what to make of this book. I read through it and found that I was at all times interested in the subject matter.
The thing is - the book only helped me put things into perspective, with regard to dates and names. The book did not really help enlighten me or give me a new perspective on the way the world operates.
Hence the title of my review. If you are one of those people who goes through life blithely and has no idea why western nations are distrusted or even hated in the developing world - read this book.
If you have actually been awake for the past few decades and understand that capatilism is not necessarily the best model - rather, it is the model that is the best financed [is there a paradox there?], you will find that this book gives you nothing new.
The book has a sentence that advises the reader of the fact the information in the book may be out of date by the time the reader finishes reading the book. This is my issue with the book.
Who really did not know that the Iraq wars [both] were for reasons other than world peace? Who really has never seen the connection between politics and corporations? Who really was surprised that the US government divided up the "rebuilding Iraq" contracts between US contractors?
Maybe it is because we live in the Michael Moore era, maybe it is because I live in Europe, where we are more inclined to ask questions and where criticism of the head of state are not consider unpatriotic. Who knows? What I do know is that this book does not tell you anything new.
What the book does do is make for an interesting biography.
The author does not really deserve any applause for his convenient turn away from corruption - as he managed to spend decades continuing his ways, making money, long before he decided to spill his confession.
What would impress me more would be if I found out that all proceeds from the sale of this book went towards some sort of third world relief.
3-stars. An interesting read.
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