An insider’s view of US imperialism

Review by ABBY WONG

Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the
World Financial Markets Imploded and What We Need to
Do to Remake them
Author: John Perkins
Publisher: Broadway Books
THERE exists such a profession – Economic Hit Man (EHM). Sounds fascinating but it is an arcane profession known only by few because of its rather unnerving job description – traveling to third world countries blessed with resources that American corporations covet, bribing their leaders into privatisation and modernisation projects that will ravage the environment and result in debts so huge that these countries eventually default in payment and become part of the American colony.

“EHMs are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars,” John Perkins, a former EHM, deadpans.
While his experience as an EHM has enabled him to write Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, a worldwide bestseller that exposes the extent to which American corporations will go to maximise profit, it has also given him an insider view to analyse in greater depth the driving forces behind the recent financial meltdown that sent the US and the world spiraling towards disasters.
Perkins’ analysis is stunning and groundbreaking to anyone who cares about the world and world economy, but to bankers and corporate CEOs, it is a bombshell.
In Hoodwinked, his new tell-all book, Perkins reveals how the very system that is perpetrated by EHMs to countries outside of the US is being used within corporate America in the last two decades, destroying an economy that was once regulated and sustainable.
Perkins calls this system mutant capitalism in which CEOs of large corporations carry out unscrupulous, unjust and law-breaking business practices within the US and outside in every corner of the world to maximise short-term profits.
It was a system that began during Ronald Reagan’s administration when American companies were encouraged by its president to conquer the rest of the economic world, hoping to thwart the USSR and Cold War through capitalism. And it did.
As policy makers began to adopt Friedman’s loose monetary economics and turned their back against Keynesian conservative and regulatory economics, corporations merged and acquired to become bigger.
They peddled their ever-increasing products to new markets until the world was saturated with so many goods that they became needless and useless. When demands ran dry and profits were threatened, companies and policy makers came out with a creative solution: loosen the monetary policy to allow consumers easy access to credit so as to expand their ability to spend.
In economic terms, they superficially shifted the whole demand curve thanks to two powerful Friedman economists – Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, both of whom served under the Clinton administration.
Corporate America moved swiftly from manufacturing to paper finance in the 1990s. Gone were classic American ingenuity and entrepreneurship stories of Dell, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
While conglomerates still manufactured and used their monopolistic tentacles to invade every corner of the world, it was investment bankers that reined the corporate world.
The greedy herd from all over the world rushed into the financial world despite the incomprehensible nature of financial products and investment schemes.
Those who fretted were fools because there was so much money to be made from stocks, real estate or any other medium of investment in any part of the world.
The financial world had never been so connected and Alan Greenspan was christened the most powerful person in the world.
It did not take long for the millions of Americans, and millions more outside of the US, who had spent to the hilt and leveraged through the roof to default.
Like EMHs did to third world nations, investment bankers enslaved consumers with debt that they could not pay. By the time the whole system collapsed, the world headed towards calamity.
The whole book reads like a thriller but it is not at all fiction. Some of the events narrated are still fresh in our minds, those who worked in the financial markets during the 1990s and 2000s. While Perkins is harsh in his criticism of corrupt bankers, politicians and EHMs, what piques him the most are the powerful conglomerates that make money at the expense of people and the environment.
The world would be a better place if corporations could be more socially responsible by moving beyond profit-maximisation, materialism and militarism that characterise the current economy to one that produces goods and services that serve the earth as well as its billions of inhabitants.
It is rare to see someone who is deeply involved with the government and corporate world to come forward and disclose the dark netherworld of US imperialism. Perkins’ book is a must-read for it is a work of moral courage and righteousness.