[Paleopsych] Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

[Steve Hovland]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1576753018/qid=1101960704/sr=2-1/  
ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-5499145-0469751

>From Publishers Weekly
Perkins spent the 1970s working as an economic planner for an international 
consulting firm, a job that took him to exotic locales like Indonesia and 
Panama, helping wealthy corporations exploit developing nations as, he 
claims, a not entirely unwitting front for the National Security Agency. He 
says he was trained early in his career by a glamorous older woman as one 
of many "economic hit men" advancing the cause of corporate hegemony. He 
also says he has wanted to tell his story for the last two decades, but his 
shadowy masters have either bought him off or threatened him until now. The 
story as presented is implausible to say the least, offering so few details 
that Perkins often seems paranoid, and the simplistic political analysis 
doesn't enhance his credibility. Despite the claim that his work left him 
wracked with guilt, the artless prose is emotionally flat and generally 
comes across as a personal crisis of conscience blown up to monstrous 
proportions, casting Perkins as a victim not only of his own neuroses over 
class and money but of dark forces beyond his control. His claim to have 
assisted the House of Saud in strengthening its ties to American power 
brokers may be timely enough to attract some attention, but the yarn he 
spins is ultimately unconvincing, except perhaps to conspiracy buffs.
Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All 
rights reserved.


Jim Garrison, author, America As Empire, President of the State of the 
World Forum
"John Perkins has written a book that shakes one's confidence in the ethics 
of the prevailing economic system."


Book Description
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man reveals a game that, according to John 
Perkins, is "as old as Empire" but has taken on new and terrifying 
dimensions in an era of globalization. And Perkins should know. For many  
 years he worked for an international consulting firm where his main job 
was to convince LDCs (less developed countries) around the world to accept 
multibillion-dollar loans for infrastructure projects and to see to it that 
most of this money ended up at Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown and Root, and 
other United States engineering and construction companies. This book, 
which many people warned Perkins not to write, is a blistering attack on a 
little-known phenomenon that has had dire consequences on both the 
victimized countries and the U.S.