CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN (3rd edition)...still infuriating after twenty years, maybe even more

CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN (3rd edition)
JOHN PERKINS
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
$21.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The riveting third edition of this New York Times bestselling title expands its focus to China, exposes corruption on an international scale, and offers much-needed solutions.

Extensively updated, this edition features twelve new chapters, including a new introduction, preface, and study guide. The book brings the story of economic hit men (EHMs) up-to-date and focuses on China’s EHM strategy.

EHMs are highly paid professionals who use development loans to cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars and force them to serve US interests. Former economic hit man John Perkins gives an insider view into this system. With a truly global perspective, this book offers powerful revelations on extremely timely elements, including the third economic hit man wave that is sweeping the world and the way China optimizes US EHM models to make them a more dominating force. China’s strategy is even more dangerous since it’s successful at enticing lower income nations.
Perkins also reveals how we can transform what he calls a failing Death Economy into a Life Economy. He encourages China’s leaders to apply the Confucian ideal of serving the family to the global community to end the EHM strategy. The book ultimately provides a source of hope and inspires readers to participate in a new era of global cooperation.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When I read the first edition back in 2004, it was an eye-opener. Remember that those were the Cheney years, where the forces of business skulduggery were very much ascendant. Their plan was, and is, to do the maximum amount of economic damage in order to impoverish and control the working people around the world with insecurity, debt slavery, and social Othering to build xenophobia and mistrust.

It suits China to go big on these proven strategies because there are so very many Chinese people...but like the Western economies, they figured without the population collapse their old people living longer and having fewer babies while they still can making the existing plans increasingly unworkable. Global climate change is not helping them, or their plans.

No need to cry for the failure to get immediate control has had on the awful people who think only of their own short-term profits,though...the plans have changed enough to make a whole new level of economic misery possible.

Reading this book was intensely angering all over again, as John Perkins uses his insider knowledge to explain the new goals and tactics to reach them. I thought humans were awful before I read the first edition. After reading the third, with its laser focus on the newest practitioners of manipulative business shenanigans, I was ready to stow away on the next SpaceX rocket. I do not care where it is going. As long as it is away from the kind of horrible, amoral, truly sociopathic scum that run things in the ways that John Perkins reveals.

However.

The John Perkins-revealed point is, now that we know, and can see, the manipulations and behaviors being deployed against our Body Politic, we can take action. Call it out, call your congressional district office, call the White House...anyone who HAS to listen...and make it clear that you want to see substantive change in the way business is regulated. Make it clear you want to see your government stand up and fight against the looting of the treasury and the planet both. Then go to the polls and VOTE THEM OUT. You still have that power, and it scares Them leaky, and they are trying to take the vote away from you. Stay active, or accept the much, much worse world the Economic Royalists are trying to cram down your throat.