Travel Reading: Confessions of an Economic HIt Man, by John Perkins

The trade reviews at Amazon seem to be on the money, but miss a point...

This purports to be the "true" story of a guy who worked on economics for writing loans to 3rd world nations. As the reviews note, much of this is not credible, and Perkins doesn't exactly cut a sympathetic figure in the book, and his homilies about poverty sound just like homilies.

What cannot be doubted, though, despite the incredulity one has reading this story about how proxies are used to bankrupt 3rd world nations to keep them in thrall to the West, is that not only countries certainly may be doing what Perkins describes here, but they probably are. Why wouldn't they?

In fact, the mechanics of what Perkins describes is pretty well known. Our "aid" to Israel, is in dollars, and most of that comes with strings to spend it in the US.

And not only that...

Japan and China might be doing this too. To us. Think about our debt. Just as we did it in Iraq. And to ourselves.

Economic policy has to be implemented to help people, not simply the wealthy.


In doing this - and as somebody smack dab in Japan I can attest to this- we are violating the fundamental rule of being gracious in a foreign place, which, if you think about it, is anywhere you are; even at home. And what's that fundamental rule?

Don't fuck with the locals.