The New Confessions of An Economic Hit Man

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THE NEW CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN (Reader's Club Masood1Ali
Thahim)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OVERVIEW 2
CHAPTER SUMMARIES AND ANALYSES 5
Preface-Chapter 6 5
Chapters 7-16 14
Chapters 17-25 23
Chapters 26-33 31
Chapters 34-47 39
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KEY FIGURES 53
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John Perkins 53
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Claudine Martin 53
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Omar Torrijos 53
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Paula 53
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Rafael Correa 54
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Farhad 54
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Jaime Roldós 54
THEMES 55
INDEX OF TERMS 58
IMPORTANT QUOTES 61
ESSAY TOPICS 70
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THE NEW CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN (Reader's Club Masood Ali 2
Thahim)
OVERVIEW
The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is the 2016 sequel to John Perkins’s
best-selling Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004), which reveals how
American corporations and the US government use major development contracts
to control third-world nations. Though autobiographical in nature, The New
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an easy read with the feel of an adventure
or spy novel. The book includes chapters on how Americans can act against the
corporate “death economy” and also contains 50 pages of documentation, notes,
and an index.
Perkins admits he served as an “economic hit man” to convince leaders of poor

countries to accept loans that pay for infrastructure projects, loans that cannot
easily be repaid and effectively put those officials in the US government’s pocket.
Leaders who resist economic capture are routinely overthrown or assassinated.
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The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man updates this story with evidence
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that US corporations continue to add countries to their economic empire and have
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recently reached into America itself to corrupt its political and economic leaders.
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Part 1 describes John Perkins’s early years and how conflicts with his parents,
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loneliness in private school, and yearning for the good life make him an ideal
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candidate for recruitment by the “economic hit man” (EHM) system. While still in
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college in Boston, Perkins attracts the attention of the NSA, which keeps an eye on
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him as a potential EHM.
Perkins cuts his teeth as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, where he and his
wife work with local brickmakers to improve their business. In the process, Perkins
becomes sympathetic to the indigenous people he meets.
Back in Boston, Perkins accepts a position at an engineering firm, MAIN, that

prepares economic forecasting and electric power grid design for countries
targeted by the EHM system. Perkins is himself targeted by a mysterious woman,
Claudine, who seduces him and trains him in the arts of an EHM. He learns that his
job will be to create forecasts, always highly optimistic, designed to convince
leaders of small countries to accept loans that will pay for infrastructure
improvements. Inevitably, these loans bankrupt those countries, which then fall
under the control of the United States and its corporations.
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Perkins’s first major job is in Indonesia, where the extreme poverty he observes,
despite the influx of development money, gives him the sense that something is
wrong with the system that employs him. He’s told, though, that his work is part of
the fight against communism. That assurance, and the luxurious lifestyle he enjoys
as an EHM, keeps him in the fold.
In Part 2 Perkins works in Panama, where he meets and befriends its leader, Omar
Torrijos. When the Arab oil embargo causes chaos in the West, the United States
brings Saudi Arabia under its wing, and Perkins writes forecasts that help American
companies build massive infrastructure projects in that country.
Part 3 details Perkins’s work in Iran and Colombia. Perkins encounters Iranian
rebels who make it clear that the shah, an American puppet, is despised by most
Iranians. Perkins’s work in Iran is cut short, and he is spirited out of the country just
before a revolution topples the shah’s regime. In Colombia, Perkins befriends a
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Colombian woman, Paula, who helps him as he battles with his conscience about
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his work as an EHM. In 1980, Perkins quits his job at MAIN.
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In Part 4 the Ecuadorian president and Panama’s General Torrijos, both champions
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of the poor and resisters against oil company domination of their countries, are
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killed in plane crashes under suspicious circumstances. Perkins realizes that if

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EHMs such as himself cannot convince these leaders to toe the line, CIA operatives
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that Perkins refers to as jackals will appear and do their lethal dirty work.
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In 1989 the US invades Panama, whose president, Manuel Noriega, is captured.

Efforts to add Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein, to the American system fail, and
the United States invades Iraq in 1991. Venezuela adopts a socialist system,
nationalizing corporations, but the United States is distracted by 9/11, and the
Venezuela problem is set aside.
Perkins starts an alternative energy company, IPS, that flourishes. He also accepts
a lucrative consulting job in exchange for promising not to write a tell-all book.
Part 5 details recent developments in America’s corporate takeover of the third

world. Techniques of domination become more brazen; Perkins himself, after
dining with a mysterious “journalist” interested in Perkins’s upcoming tell-all book,
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barely escapes death from a serious illness. Perkins learns that a failed coup
attempt in the Seychelle Islands is a US/corporate scheme. In 2009, Honduran
President Zelaya, a thorn in the side of Chiquita Brands and Dole Foods, is
overthrown; in 2010, Ecuador’s President Correa barely escapes the same fate.
Perkins finally writes his tell-all. He also decides to become an activist. His work
with an Ecuadorean nonprofit, which helps indigenous people resist oil-company
incursions in the Amazon, is halted when the nonprofit is expelled from the country.
Perkins’s research convinces him that American corporate interests have become
bolder in their efforts to dominate the world, reaching even into the halls of
American governance to corrupt and control US politicians. Meanwhile, China
becomes the latest entry into the field of third world development projects, offering
better deals than the Americans, but Perkins worries that China may itself fall prey
to the temptation to dominate the countries to which it loans money.
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CHAPTER SUMMARIES AND ANALYSES

Preface-Chapter 6
Preface Summary
An economic hit man (EHM) organizes huge loans for developing countries that
cause those nations to become beholden to US governmental and corporate
interests. It is a form of coercion that poses a growing danger to the world. Author
John Perkins serves for decades as an EHM, but his conscience torments him, and
he wants to warn others and, perhaps, help protect the world for his grandchildren.
He tries multiple times to write a confessional but is dissuaded and bought off.
In 2003 he finally finishes the manuscript and presents it to a major publishing

house, but its president turns Perkins down on the grounds that his international
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corporate bosses might object. Perkins finds another publisher, and in 2004
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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is released. The story is true and based on his
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notes, recollections, and historical accounts by others. Perkins is not killed because
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the book, out in the public, becomes his insurance policy.

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By 2015 the EHM system has grown enormously, taking over America’s own
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corporate world, and it is time to update the original book. The revised edition, The
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New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is meant to warn readers of the growing
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danger.
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Introduction Summary: “The New Confessions”
John Perkins feels haunted every day by what he has done as an economic hit
man, influencing third-world leaders with payoffs, blackmail, and threats. Recently
the American EHM system has worsened, spreading like a cancer around the
world, invading America itself and becoming “the dominant system of economics,
government, and society today” (1).
Americans are told they are threatened by insurgents and terrorists, and that they
must spend large sums and go into debt to protect the country. This money feeds
the coffers of the American “corporatocracy—vast networks of corporations, banks,
colluding governments, and the rich and powerful people tied to them” (2),
including the World Bank and related organizations.
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The key is indebtedness: “debt enslaves us and it enslaves those countries,”

resulting in a “‘death economy’—one based on wars or the threat of war, debt, and
the rape of the earth’s resources” (2). It amounts to a distorted form of capitalism
that “ultimately is self-destructive” (2).
Though this process requires hundreds of ongoing conspiracies around the world,
the real culprit is a philosophy that believes “people who excel at stoking the fires
of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the
fringes are available for exploitation” (4). To protect America’s comfortable way of
life, all means, up to and including war, are justified.
The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is updated throughout, and an

entirely new fifth section “explains how the EHM game is played today” (4) in a
manner worse than ever. The fifth part also suggests ways to overthrow the EHM
system. The book concludes with a lengthy section of documentation that offers
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“further proof of the issues covered in this book” (4).
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As American revolutionary writer Tom Paine puts it, “If there must be trouble, let it
be in my day, that my child may have peace” (4).
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Part 1: 1963-1971
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Chapter 1 Summary: “Dirty Business”

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In 1968, fresh out of business school, John Perkins and his new bride Ann travel to
Ecuador to work for the Peace Corps. They discover a country deeply
impoverished. At their posh hotel they meet a Texaco seismologist who is helping
to develop “a vast sea of oil beneath the jungle” (8) and use giant loans from the
World Bank to pay for it, along with funding from USAID, the Pentagon, and the
CIA.
Perkins and Ann soon learn that Texaco controls most of Ecuador, including the
army, and that it can dictate laws, receive protection against “the Indians who don’t
want oil rigs on their lands” (9), and overthrow the government if it resists.
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Perkins works in the Andes with brickmakers to improve the efficiency of their
process. He learns that the “ricos,” who own most of the country’s wealth, buy the
bricks for a pittance and “sold them at roughly ten times that amount” (10). Workers
who complain can be arrested as insurgents or, worse, end up dead. The
brickmakers ask Perkins to beg the ricos for forgiveness and protection.
Perkins realizes the rico system goes all the way back to the Conquistadores and
that “the people themselves were collaborators in this conspiracy”; he tells them
that “[t]hey needed to stand up to the ricos” (10). The workers form a co-op, rent a
truck and warehouse space, and contract with Norwegian Lutheran missionaries
who buy the bricks at five times the going rate—which still costs the Lutherans only
half what the ricos charge—and build a church with the bricks.
Within a few years Perkins becomes a prosperous EHM, traveling in style to exotic
locales, at first believing he is helping indigenous peoples escape the clutches of
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communism with huge development loans. “Then the nightmares began” (11), as he
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recalls countless scenes of unrelenting poverty, disfigurement, and death among
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the people he is supposed to be helping.
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He dreams about talking to a third-world leader, promising him wealth if he signs

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off on loans that will pay American companies to build infrastructure in his country,
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and casually threatening the leader with death if he refuses. Perkins awakens in a
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sweat, realizing that the dream is, in fact, what he does in waking life.
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It’s true that the poor countries where Perkins sets up the loans grow economically,
but nearly all that growth goes into the pockets of a few connected families.
“Everyone else suffered” (13). The loans prove onerous: “Money that had been
budgeted for health care, education, and other social services was diverted to pay
interest on the loans” (13).
Usually when a country has trouble paying, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
will demand resources at cut rates, establishment of American military bases,
control over the country’s United Nations vote, and control of basic services like
water and power, which it sells “to the corporatocracy. Big business was the big
winner” (13), and those businesses are always American.
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Chapter 2 Summary: “An Economic Hit Man Is Born”
Perkins is born in 1945 to a New England family. He grows up living at the private
Tilton School in New Hampshire, where both his parents are teachers, but Perkins
attends public school down the hill. His parents convince him that his townie
school chums are not quite worthy. At 14 Perkins receives a full scholarship to
Tilton, whereupon he abandons his old friends.
Lonely and frustrated, Perkins focuses on his school activities, being “an honors
student, captain of two varsity teams, [and] editor of the school newspaper” (16).
Perkins wins an athletic scholarship to Brown, and he wants to go there, but his
parents convince him to attend their alma mater, Middlebury. Perkins agrees and
attends on an academic scholarship, but he is miserable there. He meets Ann, with
whom he enjoys a deep but platonic relationship. He also befriends Farhad, son of
an important Iranian general, former professional soccer player, and charismatic
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friend who encourages Perkins’s rebellious side. Perkins’s grades collapse, and he
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loses his scholarship.
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Perkins drops out of Middlebury during his sophomore year, and Farhad is
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expelled for defending Perkins with a knife during a bar fight. They move together
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to Boston; Perkins gets a job at a newspaper.

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Perkins takes an interest in his family’s military history, as he “was raised on tales
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about my colonial ancestors—who include Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen” (19). At
first he wants to join Army Special Forces but soon he objects strenuously to the
Vietnam War. To avoid the draft and Vietnam, Perkins enrolls in business school at
Boston University. Ann visits more and more often, and soon they marry.
Ann’s father is a high-level engineer for the Navy; his best friend, Uncle Frank,
works at the National Security Agency (NSA), where he secures an interview for
Perkins. In the interview Perkins is forthright about his opposition to the war, his
frustrations with his parents, and his desire for the good life. He thinks he flunks the
interview; however, “[a]nger at my parents, an obsession with women, and my
ambition to live the good life gave them a hook” (19), and his friendship with Farhad
proves a plus, since Farhad’s father works with the American intelligence
community.
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Perkins is interested in the lives of Native North and South Americans. With Uncle
Frank’s blessing—he says there’s oil to drill in the Amazon, and “[w]e’ll need good
agents there—people who understand the natives” (20)—Perkins and Ann apply for
a posting with the Peace Corps. Their first assignment is Ecuador, whose rivers
form the headwaters of the Amazon basin. Perkins and Ann receive training and go
to Ecuador, where they work first with Amazonian natives and then with the
brickmakers. While there, Perkins finds sympathizes with the indigenous people.
In Ecuador Perkins meets Einar Greve, a vice president at Chas. T. Main (MAIN), a
consulting firm evaluating Ecuador for infrastructure loans. Greve suggests Perkins
might like to work for MAIN; he asks Perkins “to send him reports assessing
Ecuador’s economic prospects” (22). During the next year, Perkins sends 12 long
reports to Greve.
After the Peace Corps, Greve invites Perkins to interview at MAIN, telling him he
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needs economists who can work in-country to evaluate local situations. In January
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1971 Perkins is offered the position; Perkins accepts. Little does he know that his
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job “was in fact closer to James Bond’s than I ever could have guessed” (23).
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Chapter 3 Summary: “In for Life”

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MAIN has a strict code of confidentiality; “[a]s a consequence, hardly anyone

outside MAIN had ever heard of us” (24), although some of MAIN’s competitors,
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including Halliburton and Bechtel, are familiar to the public. Though MAIN employs
many engineers, it doesn’t build; it consults.
Perkins’s first job is as “part of an eleven-man team sent to create a master energy
plan for the island of Java”; Greve predicts that Indonesia has an economy “that
will soar like a bird!” (24). While he waits for the posting, Perkins is encouraged to
study up on his second assignment, Kuwait. Greve gets him access to libraries at
Harvard and MIT. Perkins takes courses in econometrics; he learns that statistics
can be manipulated.
One day at the Boston Public Library, a woman hands him a book that contains
information he has been searching for. She tells Perkins her name is Claudine
Martin, and she works for MAIN; “her assignment was to mold me into an economic
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THE NEW CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN (Reader's Club Masood10
Ali
Thahim)
hit man” (26). She warns Perkins not to discuss his work with Ann, saying, “We’re a
rare breed, in a dirty business” (26). They meet regularly at her apartment. Claudine
knows how to bedazzle and manipulate Perkins; he falls under her spell.
Perkins’s task is “to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back
to MAIN and other US companies” (27). His second task is to bankrupt the client
countries so that they become utterly dependent on their benefactors. He does
this first by evaluating the effect of various infrastructure projects on a country’s
gross national product (GNP); “[t]he project that resulted in the highest average
annual growth of GNP won” (27). These projects “were intended to create large
profits for the contractors” (28), even if they caused the countries involved to
stagnate.
GNP figures can be manipulated: If one person gets rich in a poor country, that
country will appear to make economic progress “even if the majority of the
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population is burdened with debt. The rich get richer and the poor grow poorer”
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(28).
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One purpose of all this activity is to prevent countries from becoming communist
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and, instead, to make them dependent on American interests. Claudine declares

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Indonesia is “the next domino after Vietnam […] We must win the Indonesians over.
If they join the Communist bloc, well…” (28). Perkins must convince the banks to
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loan the money; his economic forecasts must be bulletproof.

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Perkins worries that this work is unethical; he wonders aloud whether he might end
up “working from the inside” to expose it. Claudine replies, “Don’t be ridiculous.
Once you’re in, you can never get out. You must decide for yourself, before you
get in any deeper” (29). Perkins understands the threat behind her words, but he
moves forward with the training. As Claudine explains, this work is important
because it helps “to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs” (30). The old
way of military conquest is too risky in the nuclear age.
In 1951 Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalizes British

petroleum assets there. Instead of sending in the Marines, which might provoke a
war with the Soviet Union, the United States sends in CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt,
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who bribes and threatens Iranians into staging street riots; Mossadegh is
overthrown and replaced by an American puppet, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
Sending CIA agents to destabilize countries is politically risky, so the United States
begins to “identify prospective EHMs, who could then be hired by international
corporations […] their dirty work, if exposed, would be chalked up to corporate
greed rather than to government policy” (31). The age of the economic hit man is
born.
“So you see,” Claudine concludes, “we are just the next generation in a proud
tradition that began back when you were in first grade” (31).
Chapter 4 Summary: “Indonesia: Lessons for an EHM”
During the colonial era, Indonesia is “a treasure worth far more than the Americas”
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(32). Many countries vie for its control; the Dutch win out. During World War II, the
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Japanese capture and brutalize Java; after Japan surrenders, Indonesians fight for
and win their independence from the Netherlands under their new leader, Sukarno.
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Controlling the vast nation proves difficult, and Sukarno becomes dictator, allies
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himself with communist countries, and tries “to spread communism throughout
Southeast Asia” (33). Sukarno escapes an assassination attempt and launches
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military reprisals that kill as many as a half-million Indonesians. In 1968 General

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Suharto takes over and continues the dictatorship.
The United States, fearing that Southeast Asia will fall to communism, tries to rope
Suharto in, much like the shah of Iran, with a huge electrification project managed
by MAIN. As well, a huge pool of oil may lie beneath Indonesian soil.
Perkins is inspired by the possibilities that lie ahead for him. Unfortunately, he and
Ann begin to quarrel; she complains that Perkins is “not the man she’d married or
with whom she had shared those years in the Peace Corps” (34). As well, “on some
level, Ann knew that there was another woman” (34) in Perkins’s life. They take
separate apartments.
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Thahim)
Claudine warns Perkins, “Talking about us would make life dangerous for you” (34).
Perkins realizes that, since he and Claudine have always met at her place, there is
no outside evidence of the affair. He reflects, “A part of me also appreciated her
honesty; she had not deceived me the way my parents had about Tilton and
Middlebury” (34).
Chapter 5 Summary: “Saving a Country from Communism”
Perkins expects to find an exotic and lovely country when he travels to Jakarta,
Indonesia. The city contains great beauty but also intense poverty:
“Lepers holding out bloodied stumps instead of hands. Young girls offering their
bodies for a few coins. Once-splendid Dutch canals turned into cesspools.
Cardboard hovels where entire families lived along the trash-lined banks of
black rivers. Blaring horns and choking fumes” (36).
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Perkins and his team stay at the ritzy Hotel InterContinental. Charlie Illingworth,
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team manager, tells them, “We are here to accomplish nothing short of saving this
country from the clutches of communism” (37). He reminds them that their planned
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electrical system “is a key element” (37). Because America depends on oil, the
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team must ensure that the oil industry gets “whatever they are likely to need in the
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Perkins wavers between feelings of inspiration and guilt. He tells himself, “I am

here to help Indonesia rise out of a medieval economy” (37), yet he can see all the
city’s unaddressed poverty outside his hotel window. He knows that America is
here pursuing selfish ends. The word “corporatocracy” comes to mind; “it seemed
to describe perfectly the new elite who had made up their minds to attempt to rule
the planet” (38).
To Perkins, this kind of capitalism resembles feudalism. He consoles himself with

the thought that he is “helping to implement a development model that was
sanctioned by the best minds at the world’s top think tanks” (39). In the back of his
mind, however, Perkins knows that “someday I would expose the truth” (39).
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Thahim)
Chapter 6 Summary: “Selling My Soul”
After a week getting organized in Jakarta, the team moves to the city of Bandung
in a mountainous region. They live in a large and fully staffed guest house with
lovely views, and work at a suite of offices at the government’s electric company.
Perkins serves under executive Howard Parker, who encourages him to work
quickly and produce optimistic economic forecasts. Elderly, bitter, and stubborn,
Parker nonetheless proves a useful advisor to Perkins. He warns Perkins, “They’ll
try to convince you that this economy is going to skyrocket” (42) even when it
won’t.
At first Perkins protests, and Parker accuses him of selling out. Parker insists he
won’t buckle under, and his electricity demand forecast will be honest. To assuage
his conscience, Perkins tells himself that Parker’s figures will overrule his own; he
can make an overly optimistic forecast and still “have no effect on the master plan”
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(46). However, Parker becomes ill and must return to the United States. He will
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finish his analysis there, far from Indonesia.
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Preface-Chapter 6 Analysis
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Perkins presents himself as the perfect candidate to be an NSA spy: He resents his
parents and is determined to live free of their stuffy ethical constraints; he has a
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strong urge to connect with women; he’s a hard worker, athletic, and capable of
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gritty determination; and he wants to escape his family’s serene, scholarly poverty.
The NSA has the perfect job for him as an economic hit man.
Out of the blue appears the attractive, intelligent Claudine, who quickly has Perkins
wrapped around her finger. She trains him in the ways of spycraft and the theory
and practice of the EHM system. Though Claudine claims to work for MAIN, it’s
distinctly possible she was sent by Uncle Frank from the NSA. Perkins’s
acquiescence in her tutelage, as well as his willingness to cheat on Ann with
Claudine, helps establish his bona fides as the amoral predator the NSA needs.
An NSA spokesperson has vigorously denied that the agency has anything to do
with economic policy but instead is merely a codebreaking and code-making
organization. A spy agency would be expected to say this, whether it’s true or not.
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Remarkably, Perkins’s immediate ethical objections are ignored by his handlers

from the NSA and MAIN. They appear unperturbed by Perkins’s experiences as a
Peace Corps worker and his concerns about poverty in Ecuador and Indonesia. It’s
as if moral qualms are to be expected, and in any event, Perkins’s concerns get
shoved aside while he manipulates unsuspecting third-world leaders, trading their
gullibility and avarice for onerous debt. What matters is Perkins’s performance in
the field, which, right out of the gate, satisfies his employers.
Perkins is an engaging, friendly person who likes people and wants to believe he’s
doing good in the world. His moral quandary is understandable, and his attempts to
sweep those worries under the rug, using the excuse that he is fighting
communism, make him in some ways as naive as the third-world government
officials he manipulates. This lays the groundwork for Perkins’s later realization that
everyone involved gets caught up in the greed-based death economy. It’s an
irresistible proposition for all sides.
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To Perkins’s credit, late 1960s Indonesia was indeed a battleground of sorts
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between the West and communism. The country is filled with valuable resources,
and its government was unstable, vacillating between socialism and capitalism,
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veering between democracy and dictatorship. American and Soviet military and
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economic resources poured into the country as the two sides competed for
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influence. Whether these efforts did Indonesia any good is debatable, but at least
Perkins correctly assumes that his work is part of a larger battle.
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Chapters 7-16
Part 2: 1971-1975
Chapter 7 Summary: “My Role as Inquisitor”
Perkins visits “all the major population centers in the area covered by the master
plan” (49). For some reason, the Indonesians he interviews are reluctant to talk to
him, seemingly intimidated by his presence.
Perkins befriends a university economics student named Rasy who teaches him the
new national language, Bahasa Indonesia, developed by the Sukarno regime to
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help knit together the multilingual country. Rasy also gives Perkins a tour of
Bandung, where they see “shadow-puppet shows, musicians playing traditional
instruments, fire blowers, jugglers, and street vendors selling every imaginable
ware” (50). Perkins chats with many young people who marvel at this American’s
interest in their language and culture. He is enchanted.
Perkins returns to Jakarta to obtain more economic data from the government. He
realizes that the Indonesian officials resent his presence, that they see him as “an
intruder, that an order to cooperate had come down from someone, and that they
had little choice but to comply” (51).
Delays and red tape slow the process; when Perkins finally receives information
from the banks, industries, and government bureaus, it is exaggeratedly optimistic
in tone, as if all involved are playing a game. Perkins notes, “this game was deadly
serious, and its outcome would affect millions of lives for decades to come” (52).
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Chapter 8 Summary: “Civilization on Trial”
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Rasy takes Perkins to an Indonesian puppet show, where a single puppeteer

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performs 100 roles and plays all the music on a gamalong. One puppet looks like
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Richard Nixon, who proceeds to remove Vietnam from a map and eat it, then spits
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it into a bucket held by an assistant puppet. The Nixon puppet collects “Palestine,
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. After that, he turned to Pakistan and
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Afghanistan” (54).
The Nixon puppet then grabs Indonesia from the map, saying, “Give this one to the
World Bank. See what it can do to make us some money off Indonesia” (54).
Another puppet, who represents a popular local politician, leaps out and stops the
Nixon puppet, shouting, “Indonesia is sovereign” (55); the audience applauds
vigorously. Suddenly Nixon’s assistant kills the defending puppet; the audience is
wild with anger, boos, and shaking fists. The performance ends.
Later at a coffee house, Rasy’s friends ask Perkins if he thinks the US government
regards Indonesia as a bunch of grapes to be plucked. Perkins answers with a
question of his own: Why did the Nixon puppet go after Middle Eastern countries?
One young woman replies, “Because that’s the plan. The real target is the Muslim
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world” (56). She claims that, in the future, the real war will be between Christian
and Muslim countries.
Puzzled, Perkins asks why they believe this. The woman answers, “the West—
especially its leader, the US—is determined to take control of all the world, to
become the greatest empire in history” (56). The Soviets will fail to stop the United
States, but the Muslims have great religious faith and will resist. Perkins asks how
this conflict can be avoided. The woman says Americans should stop being so
greedy: “You must open your hearts to the poor and downtrodden, instead of
driving them further into poverty and servitude” (57).
A few days later, the popular local politician whose puppet defied Nixon was killed
by a hit-and-run driver.
Perkins travels to Paris to try to reconcile with Ann. She gets Perkins to confess
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that he has had an affair; hours of talking lead nowhere, and they decide to
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separate.
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Chapter 9 Summary: “Opportunity of a Lifetime”

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Greve gets promoted away, and Perkins now reports to Bruno Zambotti. Back in
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Boston, Perkins meets with Zambotti and learns that Howard Parker has been fired,
and Perkins has been promoted to chief economist at MAIN. Perkins wants to talk
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to Claudine about his adventures but has trouble locating her, as if she’s
disappeared off the map. Exhausted and jet-lagged, Perkins despairs; his
“promotion seemed meaningless or, even worse, a badge of my willingness to sell
out” (59).
Perkins pushes Claudine from his mind, completes the optimistic growth
projections for Indonesian electricity demand, and, with swagger and audacity,
survives several days of grilling by the lending agencies. The loans are approved.
In the months that follow, Perkins attends meetings in far-flung countries, meets
Robert McNamara and the shah of Iran, and enjoys all the sudden attention. His
mood, however, vacillates between arrogance and disillusionment, as it “seemed
that a glorified title or a PhD did little to help a person understand the plight of a
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leper living beside a cesspool in Jakarta” (61), and that statistics don’t confer the
ability to predict the future. He wonders why other nations want to become like
America, which suffers its own pockets of poverty and unhappiness.
Still, most of his fellow workers “believed they were doing the right thing” (62), both
for the safety of their country and the prosperity of their families. Perkins sees them
like Southern plantation owners who believe their world of servants and slaves is
the way things should be.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Panama’s President and Hero”
Since the mid-19th century, the United States has hewed to its Monroe Doctrine
that insists on “the right to invade any nation in Central or South America that
refused to back US policies” (68). To this end, presidents from Monroe to Franklin
Roosevelt become involved in the affairs of many countries in the Western
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Hemisphere. This involvement ramped up as the communist threat reached into
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the region.
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In 1903 American President Teddy Roosevelt sent the Marines to Panama to take it
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over so the US could build a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific. A puppet
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government was installed that supported American corporate interests,

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suppressed socialist and communist uprisings, and made a few Panamanian

families very rich.
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Then, in 1968, a coup “overthrew Arnulfo Arias, the latest in the parade of dictators,
and Omar Torrijos emerged as the head of state” (66). Torrijos was a man of the
people who sympathized with the poor and middle classes and sometimes paid
from his own pocket to help those in need, yet he was not a communist. Torrijos
also helped resolve disputes among other Central American countries. He
despised the American military centers located in Panama’s Canal Zone that
trained “right-wing death squads and the torturers who had turned so many nations
into totalitarian regimes” (69).
Perkins admires Torrijos, but his next job, in Panama in April 1972, is to justify
“investment of billions of dollars in the energy, transportation, and agriculture
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sectors of this tiny and very crucial country” (69), financing that will make it even
more indebted and more dependent on the United States.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Pirates in the Canal Zone”
A man named Fidel shows Perkins around Panama. Fidel gives Perkins a tour of
“New Panama,” with its modern skyscrapers and lovely beaches. Perkins chats
briefly with picnicking American citizens from the Canal Zone, who take no interest
in Panamanian culture or the Spanish language, and who despise Torrijos as “a
dangerous man” (71). Then Perkins and Fidel visit a slum area, which reminds
Perkins of the poverty in Jakarta.
Finally, they visit the US Canal Zone, where Perkins can “hardly believe the
opulence of the place—huge white buildings, manicured lawns, plush homes, golf
courses, stores, and theaters” (72). Fidel bemoans the difference between the
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wealthy Americans and the impoverished Panamanians just outside the Zone.
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Chapter 12 Summary: “Soldiers and Prostitutes”

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That night, Perkins and Fidel visit a stripper’s bar where foreign women—but, by
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law, never Panamanians—disrobe, dance, and sit on men’s laps. The men are
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mostly American service personnel on leave; the few Panamanian men are nicely
dressed, quiet, and observant. The foreign women have escaped oppressive,
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violent regimes in nearby countries and hope, through stripping and prostitution, to
make enough money for a fresh start.
An American soldier makes trouble for a waitress and hurts her arm; immediately
the Panamanian bouncer appears and violently subdues the soldier. Two US
military police step inside; the bouncer shoves the soldier roughly toward the MPs,
who drag the soldier away.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Conversations with the General”
Perkins is called to an audience with Omar Torrijos. The Panamanian leader is fit,
relaxed, and well read; he engages Perkins in a wide-ranging discussion about
world politics. Torrijos brings up America’s growing collection of puppet regimes in
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Iran and elsewhere, especially Guatemala, where in 1954 the United Fruit Company
and the CIA engineered a coup that replaced a popular land-reform president with
a right-wing dictatorship. Torrijos knows the United States dislikes him, but he has
the support of his military. He says, “The CIA itself will have to kill me!” (79)
Torrijos wants Panama to retake the Canal Zone; to do so, he must go up against
America’s vested interests. Still, he needs to develop infrastructure, especially for
the poor. He startles Perkins with a bold offer: “Give me what’s best for my people,
and I’ll give you all the work you want” (81).
Torrijos’s path is dangerous—the US may see him as taking over a process it likes
to control—but he is also willing to support a huge program. The meeting ends with
the understanding that MAIN would win the contract for the master plan, while
Perkins would ensure they did Torrijos’s bidding.
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Chapter 14 Summary: “Entering a New and Sinister Period in Economic History”
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In 1973 the OPEC oil cartel embargoes sales to the United States, sending shock
waves through the world’s economy. Perkins takes a perverse delight in this event:
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“some secret side of me enjoyed watching my masters being put in their places. I
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suppose it assuaged my guilt a bit” (84).

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During this time, Perkins holds informal discussions with his friends about world
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events. Some attendees work for Perkins; “[o]thers were executives at Boston think
tanks or professors at local colleges, and one was an assistant to a state
congressman” (84). They talk about similarities between the 1970s and the 1930s,
when governments began to take a larger role in economic management. Perkins
notes, “We were moving away from old assumptions that markets were self-
regulating and that the state’s intervention should be minimal” (85).
One recurring name in the news is Robert McNamara, a former Ford Company
president who became Kennedy’s defense secretary and, later, president of the
World Bank. McNamara favors a hands-on “Keynesian approach to government,
using mathematical models and statistical approaches” (86), including the use of
data to run the war in Vietnam. His “aggressive management” techniques are
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adopted by up-and-coming CEOs and help “spearhead the rush to global empire”
(86).
McNamara’s transition from leader of a powerful international corporation to top-

level US official is replicated later by many others, including George Schultz,
George H.W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, and Timothy Geithner.
Chapter 15 Summary: “The Saudi Arabian Money-Laundering Affair”
The Arabs embargo oil sales to the United States in October 1973 because of its
support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War with Egypt and Syria. The embargo lasts
five months, and the price of oil goes up sixfold. The United States, suffering
economically from this crisis, decides never again to be so vulnerable. It negotiates
an elaborate trade deal with Saudi Arabia, but with a twist: “it relied on Saudi
money to hire American firms to build up Saudi Arabia” (91). The idea is that the 25-
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year development plan, managed privately through a commission called JECOR,
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will help make US and Saudi interests dovetail.
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MAIN becomes a chief consultant on the JECOR deal, and Perkins is involved from
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the beginning. The process is shrouded in secrecy, but Perkins knows that “most of
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the scenarios that evolved from my studies were ultimately implemented, that
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MAIN was rewarded with one of the first major—and extremely profitable—
contracts in Saudi Arabia” (91). He receives a substantial bonus that year.
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Huge petrochemical plants will rise in the desert; the Saudis will need a large
buildup of infrastructure to support the new industry. While the “Saudis might
manage others, […] they had no desire or motivation to become factory and
construction workers” (93).
Saudi Arabia imports workers from nearby countries, which requires the
construction of enormous housing complexes as well as “shopping malls, hospitals,
fire and police department facilities, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical,
communications, and transportation networks” (93).
This project, “the total and immediate transformation of an entire nation on a scale
never before witnessed” (94), is a gold mine for Perkins and MAIN. The job is
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unique, and Perkins has no historical data to go on. Instead, he calculates the
construction costs for “what might be possible” (94) and writes glowing forecasts.
Service and management contracts alone would be so lucrative that “US engineers
and contractors would profit handsomely for decades to come” (95).
For example, a newly modernized Saudi Arabia will spark increased regional
military competition, and the US defense industry can profit by building protection
into the Arabian Peninsula. This, in turn, requires more housing and infrastructure.
MAIN’s job is to propose huge projects that get approved by the treasury
department; Perkins and his associates call their efforts “SAMA,” or the “Saudi
Arabian Money-Laundering Affair” (95). Other oil-producing countries, including
Iran, might come onboard when they see the improvements in Saudi Arabia.
An advantage for the United States is that the Saudis, as part of the deal, agree to
stabilize world oil prices. This would, “in the long run, discourage other countries
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from even considering an embargo” (97). In exchange, America would “provide
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total and unequivocal US political and—if necessary—military support” (97).
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Some members of the Saudi royal family still need convincing. Perkins is assigned
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one key player to work on, whom he calls Prince W. This man is conservative and
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understands “the insidious nature of what we were proposing” (99), whereby the
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West uses modern technological development to make inroads against traditional

Muslim culture. Perkins notes, “Religious beliefs aside, Prince W. had one
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weakness—for beautiful blonds” (100).
Chapter 16 Summary: “Pimping and Financing Osama bin Laden”
When he visits Boston, Prince W. expects a blonde female companion of great

discretion, and for this Perkins finds him a woman, Sally, whose husband cheats on
her and also travels a lot. Prince W. is pleased. Perkins must tiptoe around
corporate ethics rules to make things happen while hiding the expense.
Then Prince W. announces he would like someone like Sally “to come and live in
his private cottage in Saudi Arabia” (101). He will bankroll the young lady if Perkins
can produce her. Perkins arranges, through European contacts, for such a
companion.
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Still, it’s hard to convince Prince W. about the value of the MAIN modernization
project. Finally, he and the other Saudi royal holdouts relent, and a contract is
signed for MAIN to redesign the Saudi electrical grid. The projects begin; before
long, “every sector of the Saudi economy was modernized, from agriculture and
energy to education and communications” (104).
Part of the price is that the US government must look the other way when the
Saudis do things America resents, such as protecting mass killer Idi Amin. When
the Ugandan dictator is exiled in 1979, he receives asylum in Saudi Arabia. The
United States remains silent.
More complex is the US-Saudi deal to finance guerrillas fighting the Soviets in
Afghanistan. The Saudis go further than this, however, financing terrorist training in
several countries. Again, the United States says nothing. After the 2001 attacks in
New York and Washington, the press reveals that President Bush’s family and the
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House of Saud have financial ties going back decades.
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Perkins admires leaders on both sides of the EHM system. Robert McNamara was a
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world leader in developing statistics-based management systems, from his work at

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Ford through his tenure as US defense chief to his presidency at the World Bank.
McNamara’s approach has since been widely adopted, and it anticipated later
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developments, such as sabermetrics in sports and the wide use of artificial

intelligence and data mining today. The problem is that these types of analysis can
be employed to prosecute wars or manipulate third-world countries as easily as
they can help people better manage their resources.
On the other side is General Omar Torrijos, whose perceptive intelligence was of a
different sort, one that intuitively saw the dangers of the economic system against
which he and his country struggled. Analysts can’t calculate the damage done to a
small country’s pride and freedom by forced dependency on an outside power; for
this, a committed leader is needed. Perkins bonds strongly with Torrijos and his
attempt to free Panama from restraints imposed from abroad.
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Perkins describes the elaborate development plan worked out for Saudi Arabia, a
plan designed to bring that country into the American orbit. The Saudis, rich with
oil, can well afford such projects, and it’s clear that the EHM system used there did
not exactly turn the Saudis into pawns of the American foreign policy game. In fact,
the Saudis retained enough independence to make their own power-politics
moves, some of which embarrassed the United States and even made it complicit
in the support of terror groups that later caused serious trouble for the US itself.
That aside, the infrastructure projects seem to have benefited Saudi society. Not
every EHM endeavor succeeds in the same way, and not every third-world country
was as naive in its dealings with the United States as Perkins’s handlers might have
hoped. Torrijos, for example, knew full well how the EHM game works, and he
played it so well that Panama got a much better deal.
Modernization can damage a small country if the local officials who sign on to such
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projects plan to pay off the loans with money budgeted for health care, education,
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and so forth. Though Perkins declares that his optimistic economic projects help
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seal the deal, as if regional leaders are ignorant or not too bright, it’s likely that
those leaders, like Torrijos, knew full well what would happen, and that Perkins’s
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forecasts merely provided the excuse to move forward.

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Regardless of these outcomes, the corporations aren’t in the game to lose money,
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Chapters 17-25
Part 3: 1975-1981
Chapter 17 Summary: “Panama Canal Negotiations and Graham Greene”
In 1977 Perkins makes partner at MAIN, becoming “the youngest partner in the
firm’s hundred-year history” (109). He lectures at Harvard, answers newspaper
requests for current-events commentary, and owns a yacht moored next to the
historic military sailing vessel the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides.” His marriage is
over, but he spends “time with women on several continents” (109).
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Perkins and a team member develop new econometric models that help MAIN with
its optimistic projections; these papers become “famous throughout the industry”
(110). Perkins’s work with Panama’s Torrijos generates grumbles at MAIN for its
overemphasis on the poor, but the company keeps getting lucrative contracts,
which quiets the worriers.
Perkins also writes an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe that condemns American
colonialism in Panama. He argues that American security is no longer protected but
instead exacerbated by continued control of the Canal Zone. Perkins suggests the
Zone be handed over to Panama as a symbol of improving relations with Central
America. More office squabbling occurs, but Torrijos loves the article, and, while
other firms are getting kicked out of Panama, more work flows to MAIN.
In 1977 Perkins meets novelist Graham Greene, another friend of Torrijos, in

Panama. They discuss the risks Panama’s leader is taking by confronting the
United States; Greene says, “I fear for his safety” (115).
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Later that year, Torrijos strikes a deal with President Carter that restores canal to
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Panama. Congressional conservatives put up a fight, but in the end the treaty
squeaks through to ratification.
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Chapter 18 Summary: “Iran’s King of Kings”

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Between 1975 and 1978 Perkins travels extensively. Iran is wealthy but unstable;
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American agents work to present the shah, Iran’s “King of Kings” (117), as a man of
progress. The shah enacts land reform, builds up the military, and initiates social
reforms. MAIN develops electrical systems to help improve the country’s
infrastructure.
In Tehran a young radical named Yamin invites Perkins to speak privately. They
meet at an elegant restaurant, where Yamin explains that he singled Perkins out
“because he knew I had been a Peace Corps volunteer and because […] I took
every possible opportunity to get to know his country and to mix with its people”
(119). Yamin explains that the shah’s plan to plant trees in the desert is not his own
idea but that of Americans who stand to profit from such a project. The plan,
though, will threaten Bedouins like Yamin, whose culture centers on desert life.
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Perkins and Yamin get on well. Finally, Yamin offers to introduce Perkins to a man
“who can tell you a great deal about our King of Kings. He may shock you, but I
assure you that meeting him will be well worth your time” (121).
Chapter 19 Summary: “Confessions of a Tortured Man”
Yamin drives Perkins out to an old desert oasis. There, inside an ancient building, is
a mysterious man, Doc, who was once a trusted advisor to the shah but was
mutilated by the shah’s agents—his nose was cut off, and he was left for dead.
Now, weakened and aged, he warns Perkins that the shah is a devil, widely reviled
not only by Iranians but by people all over the Middle East, and soon he will be
deposed.
The old man and Yamin both agree that Perkins’s company will never get the
money it hopes for in Iran: “you will not be paid. You’ll do all that work, and when it
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comes time to collect your fees, the shah will be gone” (125). Why, Perkins asks, do
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they wish to warn him? While they admit they would be happy to see MAIN go
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bankrupt, they’d rather the company depart Iran: “Just one company like yours,
walking away, could start a trend” (125).
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Chapter 20 Summary: “The Fall of a King”

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Perkins encounters Farhad, his old school friend, in Tehran in the fall of 1978.
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Farhad warns him that he must leave Iran: “He told me that something ‘dangerous’
was about to happen and that it was his responsibility to see to it that I left the
country” (126). Perkins guesses that Farhad now works for “the CIA or some other
US agency” (126).
The next day, Perkins and Farhad fly to Rome, where they dine with Farhad’s
parents. Farhad’s father, once a general loyal to the shah, “expressed
disillusionment with his former boss” (126). He blames the American policy that set
up the shah as a puppet, saying the US “thought it very clever back then—as did I.
But now it returns to haunt you—us” (126). Perkins realizes that if this former
general believes the shah is doomed, then MAIN’s belief in the shah’s popularity is
built on sand.
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The old general mentions a conservative cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini, who has been
building a resistance movement. While Farhad and his father do not support “his
fanatical Shiism” (127), they believe Khomeini’s rebellion is just the beginning for
the Middle East.
Two days later, riots begin that will lead to the shah’s overthrow. In January 1979
the shah escapes Iran. In late 1979 revolutionaries take over the US embassy and
hold its occupants hostage for more than a year, demanding the return of the shah.
The shah receives sanctuary in Panama from Torrijos, of all people, but later moves
to Egypt, where he dies of cancer.
The situation teaches Perkins irrefutable lessons: “Iran illustrated beyond any
doubt that the United States was a nation laboring to deny the truth of its role in
the world” (128).
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Chapter 21 Summary: “Colombia: Keystone of Latin America”
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Colombia, long considered the keystone of America’s Latin American policy, is

Perkins’s next stop. Though relatively well off and democratic, Colombia, like most
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third-world nations, does not have a huge resource like oil or a canal with which to
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pay off the large loans it needs to improve its infrastructure. Thus, both MAIN and
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the United States fully expect Colombia to become ensnared and dependent on
American interests.
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Perkins, however, meets a Colombian woman named Paula who will change
everything. The blonde and green-eyed daughter of Italian immigrants, Paula runs
her own Colombian clothing-design business; she also is a political activist. Her
views will change Perkins’s attitude about being an EHM. She convinces him “to go
deep inside myself and see that I would never be happy as long as I continued in
that role” (132).
Chapter 22 Summary: “American Republic vs. Global Empire”
One day at a coffee shop, Perkins and Paula discuss the latest rebel attack against
a dam project managed by MAIN. A Colombian engineer is fired on, handed a
letter, and sent downriver to deliver it. The letter declares the locals’ refusal to let a
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dam flood their territory; it demands that Colombians cease work on the project.
Perkins interviews the engineer and gets him to agree that the rebels are
communists.
Paula asks if Perkins believes that. Though he replies, “I have a job to do” (134), he
is wracked by guilt. He stammers “standard justifications: that I was trying to do
good, that I was exploring ways to change the system from within, and—the old
standby—that if I quit, someone even worse would fill my shoes” (135).
Paula doesn’t buy it. She points out that many rebels have nowhere to turn but the
communists, who offer training and guns: “Your World Bank doesn’t help them
defend themselves. In fact, it forces them into this position” (135). On the other
hand, Paula sympathizes with the rebels; her brother, beaten and jailed for
demonstrating against oil development, has joined them.
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Perkins begins to believe that America has two sides. One shines as a beacon of
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hope for the world “based on concepts of equality and justice for all” (136). On the
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other hand, the “global empire […] is the republic’s nemesis. It is self-centered, self-
serving, greedy, and materialistic, a system based on mercantilism” (137). Still,
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Perkins cannot bring himself to relinquish the perks of his life. Paula haunts him
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with the refrain: “You’re not happy with yourself. What can anyone do to make
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things worse than that?” (138). She suggests that Perkins leave MAIN and remain
silent, saying, “Don’t give them an excuse to come after you” (139).
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Chapter 23 Summary: “The Deceptive Resumé”
At Paula’s urging, Perkins rereads his resume as well as a flattering news article
about him from several years earlier. Though nothing in either is untrue, they both
paint a picture that whitewashes Perkins’s work. Much of his initial efforts in
Ecuador, for example, are described as managing a major project and not simply
helping poor brickmakers make a small living for the Peace Corps. In short, “they
conveyed a perception that I now found to be twisted and sanitized” (144). The
deception lay “not in what was stated but in what was omitted,” including his
recruitment by the NSA, the “tremendous pressure to produce highly inflated
economic forecasts” (145), and his work setting up loans that countries could never
repay.
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One line in his resume, “US Treasury Department, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” (145),
is a coded reference for those in the know that Perkins participated in the Saudi
development “deal of the century, the deal that changed the course of world
history but never reached the newspapers” (146), a deal that helped sponsor
terrorism and protect a murderous dictator.
Perkins’s education hasn’t prepared him to be an economist; instead, his success

at MAIN “was a function of my willingness to provide the types of studies and
conclusions my bosses and clients wanted, combined with a natural talent for
persuading others through the written and spoken word” (146). The people he hires
know more than he does about economic technicalities, and he relies on their help
to produce reports.
Perkins trains these employees using a “sort of gentle style of brainwashing” (147)
to get them to produce the optimistic economic forecasts he needs. Unlike Perkins,
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who understands full well what he’s doing, his staff become EHMs without knowing
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In a way Perkins’s job reminds him of a mafia boss who starts out as a criminal but
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ends up a respected, well-dressed citizen who donates to charities, though

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“beneath this patina is a trail of blood” (148). Perkins’s work is aimed “at promoting
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the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever known” (148).
Even China and England have begun to use the same techniques.
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Rereading his resume transforms Perkins: “By getting me to read between the
lines, Paula had nudged me to take one more step along a path that would
ultimately transform my life” (149).
Chapter 24 Summary: “Ecuador’s President Battles Big Oil”
Oil exploration in the Ecuadorean Amazon begins in the late 1960s. A religious
organization, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), arrives from the United
States and, while recording for posterity the languages of native populations,
encourages those same people to deed their land to oil companies and move onto
reservations. Rumors fly that SIL gives free food to natives that sometimes gives
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them diarrhea, and SIL workers then bring medicine to cure them, making them
grateful.
Some of these missionaries are murdered; one victim’s sister tours America, raising
funds to continue SIL’s work. Money also may come from Rockefeller charities,
which are built on oil money.
Chief among Ecuador’s accusers is Jaime Roldós, a charming attorney-professor

who in 1978 runs a nationalist campaign for president, opposing SIL and the oil
companies. Roldós is not a communist; he asserts his country’s right to determine
its own destiny. Roldós’s Hydrocarbons Policy would direct the benefits of drilling
toward the poor, not just the richest families. Roldós wins the election.
The new administration goes after Texaco. Roldós wants Ecuador to own drilling
operations abandoned by the company. In America, President Carter takes a
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hands-off approach. The problems linger.
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At the start of 1980, Perkins resolves “that during the next year I would make a
major change in my life and that in the future I would try to model myself after
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modern heroes like Jaime Roldós and Omar Torrijos” (154). Then a major surprise
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Chapter 25 Summary: “I Quit”

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At MAIN, the scuttlebutt is that founder Mac Hall is jealous of Zambotti’s great
success as president, which explains the firing. This suspicion is confirmed when
Hall promotes Vice President Paul Priddy, friendly and competent but “lackluster, a
yes-man who would bow to the chairman’s whims” (155).
Perkins is devastated his mentor’s sudden departure. He contacts Zambotti, who

tells him, “Keep your eyes open” because Hall “has lost touch with reality” (156).
On a sailing vacation in the Virgin Islands, Perkins has an epiphany: He has blamed
his parents for mistakes he made. He recognizes that blaming them is “not just
foolish and unfair” but “self-defeating” (156). He moors his sloop at an island with
the ruins of an old slave plantation; he rows ashore. Perched on the plantation’s
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crumbling wall, Perkins realizes he is the heir to the slaver’s job of exploiting
helpless people. And so, on April 1, 1980, he resigns.
Since the 1950s, Iran has been one of the United States’ important EHM projects.
The country’s oil is vital to American interests, and Iran’s leader, the CIA’s hand-
picked shah, helped stabilize that resource. Infrastructure projects were intended
to bring Iran more fully into the modern world and closer to America. This plan,
however, came apart with the overthrow of the shah, and for the first time the US
policy of domination failed.
Perkins’s interviews with Iranian revolutionaries teach him that not everything he
hears from his side is accurate, and that forcing a country to adopt American
standards can backfire. Perkins now understands that the cocksure EHM system
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has weaknesses, and that arrogant foreign policy can breed strong resistance.
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Another weakness in US foreign policy is the assumption that everyone else in the
world wants to live just like Americans. There is some truth to this, but—especially
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in places like Iran, where ancient social and religious traditions strain under the
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urbanization can cause rebellion. This reality has set relations between the United
States and Iran back by decades.
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Perkins admits he isn’t really an economist; he is more of a salesman of economic

forecasts. In fact, critics of Perkins’s story point to studies that show benefits
accruing from the development projects he hawked overseas. For example,
Indonesia’s health index improves, thanks in part to modernization of public
services provided by American corporations.
Poverty is still rampant in countries serviced by the EHM system, and it’s true that
much of the wealth generated by modernization is siphoned off into the pockets of
a wealthy few instead of filtering down to the poor. Yet giant electric grids, road
systems, and potable water projects can’t be used exclusively by a handful of rich
families; the poor use them as well. In this respect, Perkins’s work isn’t entirely in
vain.
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Thahim)
Chapters 26-33
Part 4: 1981-2004
Chapter 26 Summary: “Ecuador’s Presidential Death”
Paul Priddy refuses to accept Perkins’s resignation. Perkins explains that he wants
to travel and, perhaps, be a correspondent for magazines such as National
Geographic; he will only praise MAIN to others. Staffers try to talk him out of
leaving; his team feels deserted.
Within months, however, MAIN hires him back as a consultant at three times his
former salary. Perkins now specializes as an expert witness on behalf of power
companies.
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President Carter loses re-election and is replaced by Reagan, whom Perkins
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considers a toady of corporate America and its representatives in government: “He
would advocate what those men wanted: an America that controlled the world and
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all its resources” (163).

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Early in 1981 Roldós brings his tough hydrocarbons law before Ecuador’s congress.
The oil companies resist with threats and bribes. Roldós holds firm; he also orders
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the SIL missionaries out of the country, threatening foreign interests with expulsion
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if they refuse to cooperate. In May, Roldós dies while flying in an airplane that
explodes.
It’s widely believed that the CIA orchestrated the plane crash. Roldós’s successor,
Osvaldo Hurtado, brings back SIL and “launched an ambitious program to increase
oil drilling by Texaco and other foreign companies” (165).
Chapter 27 Summary: “Panama: Another Presidential Death”
Panama’s Torrijos refuses to renegotiate the treaty that cedes the Canal Zone to
Panama with Reagan. Like Roldós in Ecuador, Torrijos expels the SIL missionaries.
Also like Roldós, in July 1981 Torrijos dies in a plane crash.
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Thahim)
Once again, CIA foul play is suspected. Author Graham Greene speaks with
Torrijos’s head of security, who declares, “I know there was a bomb in the plane,
but I can’t tell you why over the telephone” (167). Nothing is ever proven, but during
1975 US congressional hearings into CIA activities, it is learned that the agency
worked up plans to assassinate both Torrijos and Roldós.
Torrijos was flirting with a Japanese proposal to build an entirely new canal that
would sideline major construction firm Bechtel. Two of the company’s executives,
Caspar Weinberger and George Schultz, are in Reagan’s cabinet. Had Torrijos
lived, he might have helped to mitigate the violence plaguing Central and South
America and brokered peace between socialists and regional dictators. Torrijos
would likely have worked with nearby nations to strike better deals with oil and
construction companies, acting as “a role model for a new generation of leaders in
the Americas, Africa, and Asia—something the CIA, the NSA, and the EHMs could
not allow” (169).
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Chapter 28 Summary: “My Energy Company, Enron, and George W. Bush”
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In 1981 Perkins dates Winifred Grant, an environmental planner at MAIN “whose

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father happened to be chief architect at Bechtel” (170). Perkins and Winifred marry
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and have a daughter, Jessica, in 1982.

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Perkins’s work calls for him to defend construction of the Seabrook nuclear plant in
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New Hampshire, and once again he battles with his conscience. He discovers that
alternative energy sources, including waste products, may be safer and more
efficient. With Winifred’s support, Perkins quits his consultancy job and starts a
company, Independent Power Systems (IPS), with a mission that includes
“developing environmentally beneficial power plants and establishing models to
inspire others to do likewise” (171).
Though highly risky, Perkins’s venture benefits from seemingly coincidental outside
assistance. Perkins believes he is “being rewarded for my past service and for my
commitment to silence” (171). Zambotti joins as a board member, several major
corporations back the venture, and Congress gives IPS special tax exemptions.
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IPS and, independently, Bechtel develop power systems that prove “coal can be
burned without creating acid rain” (172). Meanwhile, deregulation creates a “‘Wild
West of Energy’ era” (173) that creates new opportunities. MAIN, unable to keep up
with all the industry changes, falters and is sold off.
A fast riser in the energy sector is Enron, which grows at an inexplicably rapid
pace. To Perkins, “this all sounded like a new version of old EHM techniques” (173).
Also, George W. Bush’s failing energy company, Arbusto, gets rescued by another
company that also fails and must be rescued. Perkins suspects Bush’s father, Vice
President George H.W. Bush, is involved in the rescue. The rescuing company,
Harken, puts the younger Bush on the board, and when the senior Bush becomes
president, Harken suddenly pushes oil company Amoco aside to win exclusive
drilling rights in Bahrain.
Many are shocked by this brazen unfairness, but Perkins knows better: “the Bush
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family, just like the Enron executives, was part of the network that I and my EHM
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colleagues had created; they were the feudal lords and plantation masters” (175).
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Chapter 29 Summary: “I Take a Bribe”

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During the 1980s and into the 1990s, as deregulation gains traction, many large
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energy companies swallow up the small, innovative firms that threaten them. IPS
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remains independent, living a charmed life that Perkins believes is due to his “past
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services to the corporatocracy” (177).
During this time, a new EHM system emerges, one that depends not on
international bank loans but on the company’s own resources. Regulators’ new
attitude is that profit is king and corporations can better manage third-world utilities
and infrastructure than governments. This greatly expands corporate options
overseas, and they take advantage, overselling their projects’ benefits to small
countries but abandoning them if profits slump.
One commentator writes, “Such is the power of globalization that within our lifetime
we are likely to see the integration, even if unevenly, of all national economies in
the world into a single global, free market system” (179).
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In 1987 Perkins decides to write a book that exposes the EHM system. He contacts
associates for their input and views. Soon he receives two threats on his life and
that of his daughter. The following day he receives an offer to consult for a major
construction company, Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation (SWEC). Mainly
they want his name to add prestige to their portfolio. Perkins has been thinking of
selling IPS, and this new opportunity seems interesting and enticing.
At an interview lunch, the SWEC CEO asks, “Do you intend to write books about
our profession?” (181). Perkins suddenly understands that the job offer is connected
to the threats on his life. He assures the CEO that he has no interest in writing a
tell-all but instead would write a book about stress among indigenous peoples.
Perkins agrees to strict confidentiality about his work with SWEC, feeling like he
has no choice.
Chapter 30 Summary: “The United States Invades Panama”
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Panama’s new president, Noriega, works both sides against the middle, flirting with
Japan on a possible new canal while helping the CIA improve its plans in the
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region. Noriega and CIA Director Casey become close, but Noriega’s continuing
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interest in building a canal without American help causes friction. Meanwhile, to the
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locals, “Noriega became a symbol of corruption and decadence” (184).

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In December 1989 the US bombs and invades Panama City; hundreds, perhaps
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thousands, die. The real target is Noriega, who is captured and “characterized as
evil, as the enemy of the people, as a drug-trafficking monster” (186). Noriega is
brought back to the United States, where he receives a 40-year sentence.
Perkins wonders why the United States hadn’t simply assassinated Noriega, as it
did other leaders it dislikes, since “now it faced the problem of legitimacy, of
appearing to be a bully caught in an act of terrorism” (187). In America press
coverage is scant, but elsewhere in the world anger breaks out from “this breach of
international law and by the needless destruction of a defenseless people” (187).
The US government ignores the protests, and the pre-Torrijos oligarchy is
reinstated. Once again, the United States effectively controls the Canal Zone.
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Thahim)
Perkins, outraged, decides to secretly continue his work on a tell-all book. This time
he concentrates on the Torrijos story. Looking back, Perkins finally realizes the full
effect the EHM system has had on the world: “the list of places where I had worked
and which were worse off afterward was astounding” (189). Perkins sees that, in a
sense, he was a good soldier trained to do bad things; he understands how decent
people can be twisted, slowly over many years, toward committing atrocities. Such
loyal citizens have worked for the shah, for Hitler, and for America in Panama and
elsewhere.
EHMs are, in effect, modern slave traders who trap and exploit desperately poor
people, ignoring “the larger implications, the economic system behind this
process—or how it will ultimately impact the future of the world’s children” (191).
Chapter 31 Summary: “An EHM Failure in Iraq”
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In the 1980s the United States considers Iraq vital to its foreign policy; “[in] addition
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to having abundant oil and water, Iraq is situated in a very strategic location” (193).
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Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, has watched the American-Saudi miracle in the
desert; if he comes onboard, he can “write his own ticket” (193). There’s just one
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problem: “Saddam was not buying into the EHM scenario” (194).
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Hussein makes a critical error: He invades Kuwait. This gives President George
H.W. Bush the excuse he needs to order “an all-out military attack” (194). Americans
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cheer this action, which bolsters the feeling of a powerful nation getting things
done, with the “dual ideas of globalization and privatization […] making significant
inroads into our psyches” (195).
Big corporations are now truly international; “[m]any of them were incorporated in a
multitude of countries; they could pick and choose from an assortment of rules and
regulations” (195). Corporatocracy “increasingly exerted itself as the single major
influence on world economies and politics” (195).
In 1990 Perkins sells IPS to Ashland Oil and becomes wealthy. That an oil company
would co-opt an alternative energy firm is, at the very least, ironic. Perkins
acknowledges, “part of me felt like a traitor” (196). His light work for SWEC
continues with occasional assignments. “Receiving all that money for doing so very
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Thahim)
little rubbed at my conscience”—he wants to contribute more, but this “simply was
not on the agenda” (196).
Perkins starts a nonprofit, Dream Change, that brings people to the Amazon to
meet the Shuar people, who believe that “your life, the world, is as you dream it”
(196), and who offer environmental and health wisdom to visitors. The organization
is a success; other groups start up “with similar missions in many countries” (196).
Perkins works with several other nonprofits during the 1990s. One of these, the
Pachamama Alliance, works “to keep oil companies off indigenous lands and to
protect the rain forests” (197).
SWEC approves of these activities, which dovetail with the company’s work with
the United Way. Perkins writes books on indigenous teachings; one of these, The
World Is As You Dream It, generates demand for Perkins’s workshops and lectures.
Still, Perkins’s guilt simmers. He realizes that his decision to remain neutral takes a
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considerable toll: “the world around me was not one that I wanted to dream” (198).
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In 1997 Perkins quits SWEC, hoping to continue work on his tell-all book. When he
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informs his fellow nonprofit workers, however, they worry that speaking out will
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damage Perkins’s credibility and jeopardize their collective work. Once again, he
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On September 11, 2001, everything changes.

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Chapter 32 Summary: “September 11 and Its Aftermath for Me, Personally”
While conducting a tour in Ecuador, Perkins learns from his native friend Shakaim
that soon the Shuar will be at war with Americans who want to drill for oil nearby.
The next morning, Perkins and his group learn of the 9/11 attacks on New York.
Perkins visits New York. He sees the destruction and talks to those who witnessed
the attack; they speak of it in heartfelt ways. The once-dark canyon of towers, now
razed, shines with unaccustomed sunlight. Perkins can’t “help wondering if the
view of the sky, of the light, had helped people open their hearts. I felt guilty just
thinking such thoughts” (201).
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Thahim)
Perkins walks over to Wall Street, where the somber skyscrapers and hurrying,
silent people make for a strange contrast. He sits on a stoop; a tattered man sits
down nearby. They strike up a conversation. The man hails from Afghanistan,
where he had a pomegranate farm that was destroyed during the conflict with
Russia. The man was reduced to begging and raising opium poppies. He gets up
and walks away.
Perkins rises, looks around, and realizes he has been sitting on the steps of a
building once occupied by Bankers Trust, “one of the firms I had employed to
finance my energy company. It was an essential part of my heritage” (203) of his
time as a “soldier” for the corporatocracy.
Perkins walks down to the old Federal Hall building where George Washington
took the first presidential oath of office. He then walks past the headquarters of
Chase Bank, “the very symbol of the corporatocracy” (204). Perkins notices that “a
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strange anxiousness, a foreboding” (204) has taken hold of him.
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He walks back to the devastated World Trade Center, where he thinks of Osama
bin Laden accepting arms and money from a consultant for the US government. He
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wonders if the people walking past him have any inkling of the starvation, death,
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Chapter 33 Summary: “Venezuela: Saved by Saddam”

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Venezuela is one of the world’s largest oil exporters; this puts it among the
wealthiest nations in Latin America. In 1998 Venezuelans elect President Hugo
Chavez, who immediately toughens rules on oil companies, doubling the price of
crude oil and replacing executives at the state-owned oil company with his own
allies.
During the 1970s and 1980s EHMs prosper in Venezuela; international loans
augment oil revenue to pay for new industry and infrastructure. Then the oil market
collapses, and Venezuela can no longer make loan payments. In 1989 the
International Monetary Fund “imposed harsh austerity measures and pressured
Caracas to support the corporatocracy” (207). Riots break out. By 2003 the
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country’s income has plunged 40 percent, and many middle-class people have
fallen into poverty.
In late 2002 massive strikes erupt in Venezuela against Chavez. Perkins suspects
American involvement: “This was exactly how the CIA brought down Mossadegh
and replaced him with the shah” (209). Perkins learns from a confidential source
that private contractors have, indeed, tried to foment strikes and bribe the military
to overthrow Chavez.
For a brief moment these efforts bear fruit and Chavez is ousted, but three days
later he suddenly regains power and purges those disloyal to him. The United
States, distracted by Afghanistan and Iraq, sets aside the Venezuela problem. In
the end, “the entire sequence of events was a calamity for the Bush administration”
(211).
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Between 1979 and 2002 the EHM system falters; the use of persuasion fails in Iran,
Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, and Iraq. The threat of force is best kept in the
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background, but when softer methods don’t work, the jackals are brought forward
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to do their dirty work. In 1981, in quick succession, the leaders of Ecuador and
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Panama die in suspicious plane crashes, and in 1989 Panama is finally cauterized
with an invasion. Two years later the US attacks Iraq; in 2002 American agents
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foment a failed coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Perkins knows full well that force backs up his work, but the sudden upsurge in its
use is more than he can bear. Fed up, Perkins quits MAIN, starts an alternative
energy company, founds nonprofits, and writes books in support of indigenous
peoples. His transformation is almost complete.
Perkins asserts that the 9/11 attacks can arguably be traced back to US meddling in
the Middle East. In a way, 9/11 symbolizes the failure of the EHM system, as the
United States is sucker-punched by some of the people it has tried to control and
dominate.
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Thahim)
Perkins wisely touches on this idea only briefly, as it is highly controversial and can
spark angry denials and charges of disloyalty from Americans unaccustomed to the
kind of violence the US regularly metes out to small countries. It’s an awkward
realization that people don’t want to think about, one Perkins addresses later in the
book when he suggests Americans transform their outlook from scarcity and fear to
love and abundance.
Chapters 34-47
Part 5: 2004-Today
Chapter 34 Summary: “Conspiracy: Was I Poisoned?”
The first edition of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is published in 2004. Early
in 2005 a man claiming to be a journalist interviews Perkins over lunch in New
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York; hours later, Perkins “suffered severe internal bleeding. I lost about half the
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blood in my body, went into shock, and was rushed to Lenox Hill Hospital” (216).
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Seventy percent of his large intestine is surgically removed.
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Doctors blame the emergency on diverticulitis, but his recent colonoscopy results
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had merely noted a few diverticula and otherwise had given him a clean bill of
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health. Perkins never sees the journalist again.

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He doesn’t believe in grand conspiracies, but he knows that EHMs engage in small,
focused plots. Some aim at the overthrow of national leaders; more recent ones
involve trade agreements, tax benefits for the rich, corporate control of countries,
and manipulation of the media. These latter operations “took the EHM system far
beyond where it had been in the 1970s” (218).
Perkins and his fellow EHMs, trained to fear communism, believe they are fighting
the good fight. Today, Americans are taught to “still fear Russia, China, and North
Korea, in addition to al-Qaeda and other terrorists” (219). The purpose is still the
same: to protect the interests of the corporatocracy, despite the damage this
inflicts on the world. All Americans share the guilt. One of Perkins’s Boston
University professors, Howard Zinn, says that “we allow ourselves to be duped”
(220).
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Thahim)
Chapter 35 Summary: “A Jackal Speaks: The Seychelles Conspiracy”
For years Perkins works out at a martial arts dojang near his home in South Florida.
In 1999 a stranger, “Jack,” joins the dojang and proves quite adept. He confesses
that he was involved in an attempt on the life of France-Albert René, president of
the Seychelles. The Seychelles are an island group in the Indian Ocean near the
US naval base on Diego Garcia; René had threatened to reveal damaging secrets
about the base. The attempt failed; part of the team hijacked an Air India 707 but
was arrested when it landed in South Africa. All the would-be assassins were jailed.
Perkins remembers being prepped to visit the Seychelles to cajole and threaten
the president into cooperating with the United States, but the trip was canceled
just before the coup attempt.
Jack, an American, grew up in Lebanon, where he was kidnapped and tortured by
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the Palestine Liberation Organization. He moved to Africa and trained with the elite
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South African Special Forces Brigade. Jack is an avid surfer, and from time to time
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he leaves the dojang on extended surfing trips, and “violent things happened in
countries where he went surfing” (223).
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In 2003 Jack accepts a Middle East assignment and is gone for two years. When
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he returns, he helps Perkins with exercise therapy to help him recover from his
recent intestinal surgery.
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Jack explains that the Seychelles assassination team was released within months
after a bribe was paid to René, who rescinded his threat to reveal American naval
secrets and instead became a US ally. Jack remarks, “It all worked out in the end”
(224). Jack reads Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, likes it, and wants Perkins
to publish more, insisting that “[we] got nothing to hide” (224).
As for the Air India hijacking, the public “believed it was the work of terrorists—
Communists—out to overthrow a legitimate government. The public had no idea
that it was a CIA plot gone sour” (225).
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Thahim)
Chapter 36 Summary: “Ecuador Rebels”
Perkins doesn’t believe the government poisoned him; doing so would have made
him a martyr and generated more sales of his tell-all book. Instead, Perkins thinks
the so-called journalist merely “felt similarly to the people who wrote e-mails
accusing me of being a traitor” (226).
Years earlier in the Amazon Perkins suffered a deadly illness but was cured by a
shaman who, for payment, demanded that Perkins become his apprentice. Perkins
learned about the “if you can dream it, you can make it happen” (227) mindset. In
2005, after his severe intestinal illness, Perkins realizes that he “had taken on a
mindset of paranoia and guilt. I needed to change it” (227).
After some soul-searching, Perkins decides that writing books isn’t enough. He
must become an activist. To do so, he resolves to rejoin the nonprofit groups he
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started, in particular the Pachamama affiliate in Ecuador, where the team works
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with indigenous peoples to fight against the oil companies. Their $1 billion lawsuit
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charges Chevron and Texaco with massive pollution of the rainforest.

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Rafael Correa campaigns for president of Ecuador on a platform of resistance

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against the international corporations that have damaged Ecuador. Correa wins
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election and promptly rescinds payment on much of Ecuador’s debt, declaring it

based on CIA corruption of previous dictators.
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Correa also closes a major US military base in Ecuador, withdraws his country’s US
investments, ceases cooperation with the CIA against Colombian rebels, and
improves environmental protections. Finally, he renegotiates oil contracts, shifting
them from a percentage of profits to a fee per barrel. The US plans a retaliation.
Chapter 37 Summary: “Honduras: The CIA Strikes”
Honduran President Manuel Zelaya increases the minimum wage and small-farm
subsidies, introduces free education and electricity for the poor, and reduces bank-
loan interest rates. These policies displease two major corporations, Chiquita
Brands and Dole Food. In 2009 Zelaya is overthrown in a coup.
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Thahim)asood Ali Thahim)
Perkins visits Panama, where he talks with movers and shakers as well as people
on the street to ferret out what happened. He learns that the locals remember well
the many times the United States, going back to Teddy Roosevelt, sponsored
coups and dictatorships to control their region.
Perkins confirms that the biggest irritant from the Zelaya administration is the 60
percent increase in the minimum wage, which would greatly increase costs for the
big multinationals. American media report merely that Zelaya sought a
constitutional amendment to extend his presidency.
In late 2010 a coup against Ecuador’s Correa is launched by police, who attack the
military, apparently with the help of the CIA. Correa retains power, but he reverses
course and auctions off “huge blocks of the rain forest to the oil companies” (237).
Chapter 38 Summary: “Your Friendly Banker as EHM”
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Perkins has dinner in 2011 with a Chase Bank executive who has read Perkins’s
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book. The executive suggests that techniques used in foreign countries by EHMs
are also used in America on unsuspecting consumers: “in recent years bankers had
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convinced clients to purchase houses that were beyond their means” (238), with
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some loans requiring little to no documentation. The Great Recession bankrupts

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Perkins recalls his Great Uncle Ernest, a small-town bank president in the 1950s.
He thought of homebuyers as partners and considered Wall Street a casino. He
would say, “All our money comes from local people, and it all goes back into the
local economy” (240). Perkins feels guilty by comparison.
Months after the dinner with the bank executive, word comes that European banks
have manipulated loan rates since 1991 and raked in billions in illicit profits. Fines
are imposed, but not a single banker is indicted.
Chapter 39 Summary: “Vietnam: Lessons in a Prison”
Perkins travels to Vietnam early in 2013 on behalf of a group that helps victims of
land mines and other wartime explosives. Perkins visits the “Hanoi Hilton” prison
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Thahim)
where US war prisoners were held. Inside, Perkins sees the cramped cells where,
during the French colonial period, men and women were tortured, raped, and
beheaded.
An upstairs office displays photos of American military men working or eating in the
prison. The images “delivered a clear message: the Vietcong had treated American
prisoners far more humanely than the French had treated the Vietnamese” (246).
Perkins, however, remembers learning that many Americans were also tortured
here. Another room was “adorned with pictures of the havoc US forces had
wreaked on Hanoi” (246).
Perkins feels saddened for everyone involved in that terrible war. He also feels
guilty for his part, not in the war but in another kind of devastation, as “a man who
had enslaved countries through debt” (248).
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Chapter 40 Summary: “Istanbul: Tools of Modern Empire”
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The EHM network today is vast, encompassing not only third-world but developed
countries. Corporations now “locate their production plants in one country, their
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tax-sheltered banking in a second, their phone call centers in a third, and their
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headquarters in a fourth”, which “gives them immense leverage” (250). Countries

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vie to subsidize corporate interests; uncooperative government officials are

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Turkey hosts a conference in April 2013, and Perkins attends. He meets with
Turkish diplomat Uluc Ozulker, who agrees that empires have always relied on two
main tools: “Fear and debt” (251).
Ozulker explains why Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi drew the ire of the United
States. Gadhafi at first received aid from Soviet Russia, which he partly used to
improve the life of his people; when the Soviet regime collapsed, he mended
fences with the US and Britain. France, feeling left out of the resulting oil deals,
aided Libyan rebels. The US and Britain, suffering bad press from their support of
Gadhafi—who further alienated them by encouraging other countries “to sell oil for
Libya’s gold dinar instead of dollars” (252)—turned on the Libyan leader, who was
overthrown and killed.
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Thahim)
Ozulker says the United States was involved in the 1980 coup that replaced
Turkey’s government. America also takes advantage of “the schism between
Sunnis and Shiites” in the Middle East and exploits “civil wars and tribal factions”
that “create power vacuums that open the doors to exploitation” (252). Such
internecine battles encourage both sides to take on more debt and buy more
armaments. Ozulker blames “the CEOs and major stockholders of the
multinationals that run the world. They are the roots of the problem” (253).
Chapter 41 Summary: “A Coup against Fundación Pachamama”
Ecuadorean President Correa, shaken by an attempted coup, opens bidding on

blocks of the Amazon basin to oil companies in November 2013. Indigenous
protesters, backed by Perkins’s group Fundación Pachamama, picket the
presidential palace. Strangely, few oil companies make bids. One oil executive
comments, “It just isn’t worth the risk of all the bad publicity” (257).
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Police suddenly raid Fundación Pachamama offices and shut down the
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organization. Though Perkins is angry, he also realizes that Correa has no choice:
“he had to compromise, keep his job, and fight battles he had a chance of winning”
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(258). Correa achieved much by standing up to oil companies and the World Bank,
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improving the lives of Ecuadoreans, and doing what he could to protect the
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Chapter 42 Summary: “Another EHM Banking Scandal”
Major banks are caught rigging foreign exchange rates, a scheme going back to
2007, and are fined billions in 2014. The situation demonstrates “that everything—
conspiracy, collusion, fraud, unfair competitive practices—is justified by the
corporatocracy, so long as it earns large profits” (260).
The EHMs involved are much more blatant than in Perkins’s day. Internal
correspondence shows that they “relished their roles as bandits and mafiosi,
bragged about being part of a cartel” (261). Perkins is angered by this and by the
inaction of regulators who look the other way. He also feels frustrated “by how
anesthetized the American public has become to being exploited” (261).
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Thahim)
The 2015 FIFA soccer scandal becomes the latest example of the corporate
system’s reach. Even within a sport, “the perpetrators employed many of the tools
that had been part of my EHM kit, including bribes, fraud, and money laundering,
and it was done in collaboration with the big banks” (262). Perkins is troubled that
FIFA executives are carted away in handcuffs while the bankers walk free, since
“the bankers are members of the corporatocracy, whereas FIFA officials are not”
(262).
Despite the World Bank’s mandate to end it, poverty remains endemic; meanwhile,
1 percent of the world’s people control half the wealth. Sixty countries together still
owe half a trillion dollars, and the “cost of servicing that debt is more than these
countries spend on health or education” (263). World Bank projects have forced
millions from their homes; protesters have been “beaten, tortured, and killed” (263).
The corporatocracy convinces the world that success is determined by “personal
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assets” rather than contributions to society, that “privatization and deregulation
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protect the public, that government assistance for the needy is wasteful and
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counterproductive,” and that the rich “are icons to be emulated” (264).

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Chapter 43 Summary: “Who Are Today’s Economic Hit Men?”

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Corruption common to third-world countries has now infected American

institutions. Modern EHMs “stroll from the corridors of the White House through the
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US Congress, along Wall Street, and into the boardrooms of every major company”
(265). This has happened because “corporate EHMs draft the laws and finance the
politicians who pass them” (265).
The infection runs deep. Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle
paints himself as a man of the people. Instead, he becomes a $2 million-a-year
lobbyist for the DLA Piper law firm that works to protect The Gap and other
companies from liability for the collapse of a Bangladesh garment factory and the
death of 1,100 workers there.
Similarly, former senator and presidential candidate Chris Dodd portrays himself as
a man of integrity, promising never to become a lobbyist for big business. Instead,
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he becomes “chairman and chief lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of
America” (267).
On the Republican side, Perkins points the finger at “Perkins Ashcroft, Bob Dole,
Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, Chuck Hagel, Trent Lott, [and] Warren Rudman” (267),
among others. The list of politicians-turned-lobbyists on both sides of the aisle
“seems endless” (267). Revolving-door politicians “are EHMs, paid to support the
corporatocracy, expand the corporate empire, and spread the tentacles of the
death economy across the planet” (267).
Officially, the number of lobbyists in 2013 is 12,281, or 23 for every member of

Congress, but some believe the true number approaches 100,000. Lobbyist
spending is estimated to range between $3 billion and $9 billion. Big corporations
spend 30 times as much money on lobbying as labor and public-interest groups
combined. Corporate lobbyists use EHM techniques, including bribery and
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blackmail, to intimidate politicians into obedience.
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Corporate EHMs called “site location consultants” put pressure on local

governments to give companies special treatment: they “play to fears that
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communities will be rejected unless they offer the most lenient environmental and
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social regulations, the lowest tax rates, and other incentives” (269).
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A chief difference between EHMs working in third-world countries and those plying
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the halls of government in America is that, “instead of World Bank loans, modern
EHMs in the United States use tax policy and subsidies” (270). Tax breaks are
much more efficient for corporations than trying to enforce payment of loans.
Big corporations, especially arms makers, oil companies, and agribusiness, are
good at getting grants and subsidies. Since 2000, “a shocking 298 corporations
each received subsidies of $60 million or more” (270).
Perkins singles out Walmart for its tax dodges that involve shell companies in
Luxembourg and public assistance funding for its impoverished employees.
Vulture funds buy up third-world loan defaults for pennies on the dollar; then, when
the struggling countries begin to repay, the vulture funds “demand payment of the
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debt, plus interest, often tacking on additional fees” (273). One such fund, Elliott
Associates, buys $20 million in Peruvian defaults for $11 million, then sues Peru and
wins $58 million.
Chapter 44 Summary: “Who Are Today’s Jackals?”
During World War II, American soldiers rescued children from burning buildings
and liberated Nazi concentration camps. In the 1950s CIA and FBI agents put their
lives on the line when they infiltrated communist groups. Even the Seychelles
jackals risk their lives, though Perkins disapproves of their task. Today, unmanned
drones fly into residential areas and blow up buildings. Perkins believes this is
cowardice: “They don’t risk their lives; they don’t hear the screams of the
wounded” (276).
US drone strikes have killed thousands in the Middle East, many or most of them
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innocents. This ruthless policy “destroys the reputation of a nation that gained the
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world’s respect during World War II” (276).
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Jackals today make use of resources once “considered inappropriate, cowardly, or

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even counterproductive” (277), including CIA torture, imprisonment, and

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assassination programs, military satellites and airstrikes, and Army Delta Force or
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Navy Seal strike teams that engage in spying operations and global manhunts.
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The secrecy surrounding these activities makes it hard to determine the amount of
collateral damage, including civilian casualties and loss of respect for America in
the rest of the world, as well as the degree to which resentment causes people to
join anti-American terrorist groups.
National fears after 9/11 caused Americans to “sacrifice privacy and freedom” to the
NSA, CIA, and FBI, so that techniques “perfected overseas, including drones and
surveillance aircraft, are now used to spy on us in the United States” (279). As early
as 2006, reports surface that the NSA is “intercepting Americans’ phone calls and
Internet communications” (280). Later it’s revealed that the NSA listens in on the
phone calls of world leaders, including US allies.
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The jackals use character assassination against American politicians. The

impeachment of “President Clinton served as a warning to all leaders, present and
future” (281). Sex scandals, innuendo, and false evidence remind our leaders that
“modern eavesdropping technology can be used to destroy them—or to plant
incriminating evidence that will destroy them” (281).
Mercenaries have become a major jackal tool. “By 2012, there were almost 110,000
contracted mercenary forces in Afghanistan alone, compared with 68,000 US
military personnel” (281). The biggest mercenary contractors represent hundreds of
thousands of soldiers. Mercenaries, because they are not directly part of the US
military, help to insulate the American government from accountability.
As Perkins notes, “All of this is part of the corporatocracy’s determination to do

whatever it deems it will take to maintain control” (282).
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Chapter 45 Summary: “Lessons for China”
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Ecuador’s President Correa, refusing to pay off some of his country’s sketchy past
loans, turns to China for financing. By 2015, China owns 28 percent of Ecuador’s
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debt and is “buying almost 55 percent of Ecuador’s oil” (284).

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At first third-world countries were overly dependent on US dollars. Despite the

draconian terms of the trade agreements, “[t]hey fear they can’t survive without the
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corporations” (284). Today, China is an alternative to harsh US policies; the

Chinese deals are much less severe. Still, “the simple fact remains that China is
using debt—massive amounts of it—to further its own EHM system, to control
countries and their resources” (286).
China has committed as much as $200 billion to Latin America, more than all
Western loans there. China has also made deep inroads in Africa, India, and East
Asia, catapulting itself to “the position of master of global debt” (286) in less than a
decade. Its efforts in Ecuador include hydroelectric power, an oil refinery, “roads,
highways, bridges, hospitals” (286), and more.
Perkins visits Ecuador’s Amazon region in the summer of 2015, where he confers
with his Pachamama allies. They admire China’s miraculous growth over the
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decades but fear its increasing economic power in the region. Its domestic might is
built on highly polluting technology; “people expressed fear that the Chinese
model would cause even graver problems than the US model had” (287).
China’s tremendous growth is due in large part to the West’s appetite for consumer
products. China has learned our industrial techniques; now it is copying America’s
“death economy” in its exports to the third world. The solution isn’t simply about
what things to buy but “about changing the ideas, the dogmas that have driven
economics for centuries: debt and fear, insufficiency, divide and conquer” (288).
Perkins believes the world needs “a consciousness revolution” (288).
Chapter 46 Summary: “What You Can Do”
Perkins receives the Lennon Ono Grant for Peace and a large contribution to his
Dream Change nonprofit. This group sponsors a business conference, the Love
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Summit, which encourages “businesses to achieve higher, more compassionate
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standards” (289). The conference’s odd name seems to work; attendees agree
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that, if a company wants people to love it and its products, the company must
produce “products that serve life” (289).
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Some people want to be rid of corporations altogether. Perkins believes the odds
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of this happening are very low, and that it is wiser to “take the shamanic approach,
to transform—shapeshift—the attitudes and goals of those who own and manage
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the corporations” (291).
Perkins learns from CEOs that they often want to implement more positive
corporate strategies but are stymied by the system’s demand for short-term profits.
Thus, “they crave consumer movements that generate thousands of letters and e-
mails” (292) that they can show to their boards. Perkins realizes that the
marketplace has attributes of a democracy, and that “every time we buy
something, we cast a vote” (292).
Individuals can participate in this change by “following your unique passions,

employing your skills, and joining the growing community that is determined to
create a better world” (294). Recycling and driving less can help, but real change
comes when people build communities of the like-minded.
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Perkins meets the Dalai Lama, who tells him that praying is good but “if that is all
you do, it’s a waste of time. It may even be a distraction. You need to take
appropriate daily action” (294). Perkins believes people can do many things to
help, including political activism, boycotts, blogging, making videos, and running
for office, all in an effort to “spread the good news about a life economy” (296).
People can support the life economy at work by encouraging sustainability and by
pursuing their passions in ways that promote the new vision.
Most importantly, Perkins believes people should “enjoy the process. Follow your
bliss. Make it fun. Don’t burn out” (297).
Chapter 47 Summary: “Things to Do”
Different age groups can help birth the life economy in different ways. The
suggestions that follow can also be mixed and matched by members of any age
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group, just “choose items that fit your passions, that raise your bliss factor, that
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bring joy into your life” (299).
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First, Perkins lists 11 things everyone can do: Keep telling the new story; shop and
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invest consciously; live consciously; pick a cause that appeals to you; participate
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and spend locally; flood media with information; support your favorite reform
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movements; support creation of parks and preserves; campaign for finance reform
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and climate change regulation; use cash and pay off debt; and promote people
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who are working to make a better world as heroes.
Then he details nine things students can do: Learn what’s really going on in the
world; question authority; find your passions; join others who work for change;
speak out; stand up against debt; work only for firms and groups that support your
stance; join organizations that support your stance; and make videos or films about
ending the death economy and birthing a life economy.
Next, he focuses on six actions for retired people: Rattle the cage (because you
can’t be fired); take action despite your fears; mentor younger people; demand
responsible investments from your pensions, mutual funds, and the like; campaign
for political and corporate reform; and share your story with others, especially the
young.
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He then introduces nine recommendations for those between student and

retirement age: Learn what’s going on beneath the surface; improve your
communication skills; campaign for economic and tax reforms; participate in
movements that support businesses that constructively “serve a public interest”
(305); support community-based business; join protests and movements that
support better social and environmental conditions; become aware of your own
biases; help younger people to take inspired action; and speak out at your
corporation or stockholder meeting.
Next, Perkins lists 11 things corporations can do, which consumers should insist
upon: Commit to the public, the environment, social harmony, and justice; convince
your owners and workers that these commitments serve long-term corporate
interests; create sustainability programs; institute fair-wage compensation for your
workers and demand it from vendors; hire workers who want innovation and
responsible change; encourage employee camaraderie and community through
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collaborative decision-making; invest in the community; listen constructively to
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criticism; encourage corporate diversity and inclusion; encourage ethical behavior;
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and promote the public-interest mission in all communications.

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Finally, he lists five things entrepreneurs can do: “Follow your heart […] Get started
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[…] Build communities and networks […] Be the company you envision for the future
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[…] Undertake the eleven actions outlined in ‘Eleven Things Corporations Can Do’”
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Part 5 is the most important addition to this updated version of the original book,
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. It describes major US foreign policy events
since that book’s release in 2004 and brings to date Perkins’s own experiences as
an activist for change.
Perkins believes US policy is continuing on a destructive course. The 2009 coup in

Honduras and the near-coup in Ecuador bespeak business as usual. Perkins
continues his efforts to halt these policies, sometimes in the face of threats.
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Perkins also wades into controversial territory, connecting a number of events—the

FIFA scandal, corruption in the US Congress, the World Bank’s failure to eliminate
poverty, Walmart’s tax benefits, and the ongoing coups and violence in Latin
America—into one vast movement by the “corporatocracy” to take over the world.
Perkins is quick to deny that he believes this is a conspiracy, but it’s hard to draw
any other conclusion. If all these disparate phenomena are indeed connected, then
there really is a deadly plan by corporations to control the planet.
Perkins has done an effective job of showing how US governmental and corporate
power have overcome nearly all protests, official defiance, and democratic
elections to dominate foreign countries. By Perkins’s reckoning, these forces are
moving in on America itself, compromising its political system and binding
consumers to a death economy.
If Perkins’s depiction is correct, then there is little anyone can do to stop the
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relentless march toward corporate dominance. If America’s own leaders ignore the
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voters and cater only to the whims of corporate lobbyists, and if demonstrations,
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riots, and rebel sabotage have proven useless elsewhere, then few avenues of
defense are left to innocent people.
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Perkins nevertheless forges ahead, recommending several actions for citizens in

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Chapters 46 and 47. He theorizes that change will come when people replace the
old scarcity mindset with feelings of love and commitment for others. His hope is
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that, with a massive grassroots effort, the corporations will come to see that the old
approach puts everyone at risk, not just the poor, and that the wealthy will suffer
along with the rest of the world. Indeed, many corporate leaders have praised
Perkins’s work and expressed desire to embed life-affirming attitudes in the
boardrooms and workplaces of American business.
Whether this succeeds, or whether the EHM death economy wins out in the end,
depends on all of us.
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KEY FIGURES
John Perkins
Author John Perkins wrote this tell-all about his life, from his frustrated youth at a
boys’ school to his international jet-setting career as an economic hit man. He
worked to convince third-world nations to take out huge loans to pay US
companies to build modern infrastructure in those nations. That such work entraps
countries, making them pawns of American foreign policy, so rankled Perkins that
he quit his EHM career to embark on a life of activism and writing against the very
system that once sustained him.
Claudine Martin
Claudine, alluring yet coldly cynical, trained Perkins to be an economic hit man,
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teaching him to lure developing nations into accepting onerous development
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loans. From Claudine Perkins learned that he is “in for life” and must always seek to
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benefit America and its corporations at the expense of the poor.
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Omar Torrijos
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General Torrijos wanted to help the poor of his country, Panama. He knew full well
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how the American corporatocracy worked in developing countries, but Perkins’s

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open admiration for Torrijos’s work generated trust between the two. Torrijos and
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Perkins agreed that, for Panama at least, Perkins’s economic forecasts would be
accurate; in exchange, Torrijos gave Perkins’s company all the work it could
handle. Torrijos also negotiated with American President Carter for the Canal
Zone’s return to Panama. Torrijos remained a thorn in America’s side until he died
in a suspicious plane crash in 1981.
Paula
A Colombian, Paula befriended Perkins and helped him deal with his conflicting
feelings about being both an economic hit man and a sympathizer in the cause of
the third-world poor. Perkins emerged from this relationship with the desire to work
for indigenous peoples, and he quit his job as an economic hit man.
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Rafael Correa
Correa became president of Ecuador in 2006. Like Torrijos in Panama, he resisted

American influence, closing off its investments in Ecuador, shutting the major US
base there, and working to improve the Amazonian environment. Correa barely
escaped a coup attempt in 2010, whereupon he reversed course and reopened
bidding on Amazonian oil fields to American drillers. He also expelled the local
chapter of Perkins’s Pachamama Foundation, which supports indigenous
Amazonians against the oil companies. He served as president until 2017.
Farhad
Perkins befriended Farhad at Middlebury College. Farhad’s father was an Iranian

general with connections to the US government. Farhad was expelled for
defending Perkins in a bar fight; later, Perkins quit Middlebury and roomed with
Farhad in Boston. Perkins’s connection to Farhad helped pave his way to the life of
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an economic hit man. Years later, while working in Iran, Perkins encountered
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Farhad, who was then an American agent. Farhad whisked Perkins out of Iran just
before revolution overthrew its government.
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Jaime Roldós
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Like Torrijos in Panama, Roldós led Ecuador as a champion of the common man
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and supporter of freedom from US influence. He fought the oil companies, and
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Perkins considers him a hero in the style of Torrijos. Roldós served as president
from 1979 to 1981, when he died in a suspicious plane crash, just as Torrijos did
months later.
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THEMES
The Corporatocracy’s Quest for Dominance
“Corporatocracy” is Perkins’s name for the combined efforts of the US government

and American corporations to dominate and exploit third-world countries through a
program of debt and fear.
The debt comes from loans granted to developing nations to pay for extensive
infrastructure improvements; the fear comes when those countries, swamped by
onerous debt payments, finally default, and American agents force them to accept
draconian terms or suffer violent reprisals. The United States compels the countries
to permit further exploitation, accept American military bases, and vote as
instructed in the United Nations.
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As developing countries are bound to the United States through debt and
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economic dependence, they become yet another piece in “history’s first truly
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global empire—a corporate empire supported and driven by the US government”
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(28). Though it is not a true imperial unit, this soft empire functions much like one,
with the system enriching corporations and a few wealthy families in each
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developing country while hamstringing the local poor, whose public services,
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health care, and education are often sacrificed to pay off the loans.
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Chief among the perpetrators of this scheme are “economic hit men,” including
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Perkins, who present overly optimistic economic forecasts that promote

development projects for each country, which helps convince local officials to sign
off on the huge loans such projects require.
As the development projects unfold and the loans become harder to pay, some
local leaders may balk at the entrapment. If they resist, the “jackals” are brought in
to enforce compliance, sometimes by overthrowing the officials or, if necessary, by
assassinating them.
Perkins believes the corporatocracy has lately extended its reach into America,
bribing and threatening government officials into favoring corporate interests.
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The Conflict Between Greed and Compassion
As an economic hit man, Perkins is haunted by concerns that his work with
developing nations does more harm than good. He knows his job is to cheat local
governments, but he also knows that America greatly fears the global expansion of
communism and wants to stop it wherever it can, in part through the efforts of
agents like Perkins. The corporatocracy, dirty though it may be, is the main system
for accomplishing US foreign policy goals in the developing world. Perkins also
enjoys large paychecks and a posh lifestyle filled with international adventure;
these perks lure him back into the fold whenever his conscience balks.
Perkins vacillates about this dilemma. He tries to assuage his conscience by

learning about and sympathizing with locals and indigenous people. This makes
little difference to the demands of his work life, however, which compels him to
continue selling regional leaders on the purported merits of the development
programs he hawks. At one point Perkins achieves a sort of compromise through
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his friendship with Panama’s Omar Torrijos, who repays Perkins’s honest economic
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forecasts with plenty of development work for Perkins’s company.
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Though Perkins wants to do good in the world, and though his moral quandary is
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understandable, his attempts to excuse his work by insisting he is fighting

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communism make him as naive as the third-world leaders he manipulates. This

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leads to his eventual realization that every player in the EHM system is enticed by
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its greed-based death economy. This scheme tempts all sides.

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It requires the unstinting efforts of Perkins’s Colombian friend Paula to convince

Perkins that he must walk away from his economic hit man role and assume a new
life as an activist. Perkins starts an alternate energy company, writes books, creates
foundations to promote the interests of indigenous Amazonians, and finally pens a
tell-all autobiography and its sequel, The New Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man.
Perkins hopes that people and corporations alike will resolve the conflict between
greed and equality by abandoning attitudes steeped in scarcity and fear for ones
founded on abundance and love.
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The Need for Life-affirming Transformation
The corporatocracy chugs forward relentlessly, gathering steam as it hurtles

toward total world domination. Its motive is greed, its method is debt and fear, and
it seems unstoppable. Yet the corporatocracy contains a fatal flaw: Its program
destroys everything, even those enriched by the economic hit man system—or, as
Perkins also puts it, the “death economy.”
This destruction comes about largely through the degradation of the environment.
The biggest corporate interests in the death economy, the oil companies, generate
pollution on a global scale. The other corporations, with their endless construction
projects, dam up rivers, tear down forests, and promote mass consumerism, which
all take a heavy toll on natural resources.
Democracy, demonstrations, protests, and rebellions have failed to slow the death
economy’s march. Masses of people are fed up with this relentless process, and a
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growing number of corporate CEOs want to refocus their firms from mindless
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consumer mongering to conservation, creative solutions, and respect for all
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peoples. Perkins offers an action plan based on love for others, a passion for vital
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work, and a willingness to join hands in community efforts.

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INDEX OF TERMS
Corporatocracy
The US government and American corporations combine to dominate foreign

countries, fast-talking them into taking out huge loans to pay for infrastructure
development, then strong-arming them into accepting onerous conditions when
the countries have trouble paying their debts, and finally removing or killing local
leaders when they resist. This process works so well that it becomes
institutionalized and nearly unstoppable, a system Perkins calls the
“corporatocracy.”
Dream Change
A foundation to assist the Shuar people of the Amazon, Dream Change promotes
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the Shuar belief that “your life, the world, is as you dream it” (196). Through its
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auspices, Perkins conducts tours to the Shuar homeland, where visitors learn
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directly from the Shuar, “who were eager to share their knowledge about
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environmental stewardship and indigenous healing techniques” (196).

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Economic Hit Man (EHM)

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Perkins calls himself an economic hit man, one of many who bring rose-colored
predictions of wealth and economic growth to developing countries that accept
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loans to pay American corporations for huge modernization projects. The

predictions are exaggerated, and the loans harder to repay than expected. When
the loans are restructured, the victimized countries take a huge hit, both politically
and economically, and become subservient to US corporations.
Independent Power Systems (IPS)
Independent Power Systems, founded in 1982 by Perkins, is “a company whose

mission included developing environmentally beneficial power plants and
establishing models to inspire others to do likewise” (171). In a highly competitive
market, IPS soared, and Perkins believes the company received backroom help
from powerful people who prefer when Perkins is busy working and not writing
exposés. Perkins sold IPS to Ashland Oil in 1990.
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Jackals
Jackal is Perkins’s term for an agent, either of the US government or American

corporate interests, who uses force to compel obedience from third-world leaders.
Jackals are brought in when those leaders, having accepted loans to build
infrastructure, resist excessive demands made on them later by banks and
corporations. Jackals have no qualms about engineering political coups or
assassinations.
JECOR
The Arab oil embargo of 1973 shocked the West and convinced the United States
that Saudi Arabia must be brought into its economic orbit to prevent future oil
disruptions. The “United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic
Cooperation” (91), or JECOR, was the result; the quasi-private organization oversaw
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a giant program of development projects in Saudi Arabia provided by American
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corporations. JECOR was run from the US Treasury Department but structured as
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an independent entity and was therefore free from meddling by the US Congress.
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MAIN
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Chas. T. Main Inc., or MAIN, was an engineering company that specialized in

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designing large-scale electric power grids for developing nations. MAIN helped
those countries obtain loans from the World Bank to pay for infrastructure
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improvements. Perkins’s job as chief economist at MAIN was to produce economic

forecasts that promoted the projects as rock-solid investments. The projects were
completed, but the promised economic growth usually proved less than advertised.
By then it was too late, and the countries involved became indentured to US
corporate and political interests.
Pachamama Alliance
Set up by Perkins to help promote the interests of indigenous peoples living in the
Amazon basin, Pachamama raises funds “to protect the rain forests from
encroaching industrialization” (197), in part by hosting tours of the Amazon to
promote awareness. A spin-off organization in Ecuador, Fundación Pachamama,
took an activist stance and was expelled from the country.
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SAMA
The “Saudi Arabian Money-Laundering Affair” (95) was MAIN’s in-house code
phrase for the massive development project undertaken in Saudi Arabia by US
corporations. Unlike most third-world nations undergoing the economic hit man
process, Saudi Arabia needed no outside loans to afford modernization. Instead,
Saudi oil money paid the bills, and, among MAIN’s agents, “the kingdom’s central
bank was called the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, or SAMA” (95).
Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)
SIL is an American missionary group that records the languages of indigenous

peoples; it also encourages them to deed their lands to the oil companies.
Ecuadorean President Roldós expelled SIL, but after his sudden death, his
successor brought the organization back.
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IMPORTANT QUOTES
1. “I’m haunted every day by what I did as an economic hit man (EHM). I’m
haunted by the lies I told back then about the World Bank. I’m haunted by the
ways in which that bank, its sister organizations, and I empowered US
corporations to spread their cancerous tentacles across the planet. I’m
haunted by the payoffs to the leaders of poor countries, the blackmail, and
the threats that if they resisted, if they refused to accept loans that would
enslave their countries in debt, the CIA’s jackals would overthrow or
assassinate them.” (Introduction, Page 1)
This, in a nutshell, is what the book is about. Perkins’s public work as an EHM
vies with his private sympathies for poor and underserved indigenous
peoples and his anger at America’s cold mercantilism.
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2. “The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest
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citizens of health care, education, and other social services for decades to
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come was not taken into consideration.” (Chapter 3, Page 28)

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When a small country accepts World Bank loans to pay for modernization,
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both sides assume the debt will be settled, in part, with money formerly
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budgeted for health care, education, and the like. For a time, then, the
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country may slide backward as it tries to modernize.
3. “[T]he main reason we establish embassies around the world is to serve our
own interests, which during the last half of the twentieth century meant
creating history’s first truly global empire—a corporate empire supported and
driven by the US government.” (Chapter 3, Page 28)
In the decades since World War II, most of the great colonial empires have
dissolved. America, a beacon of freedom, makes a point of liberating
countries; it can hardly assemble its own empire. Instead, the US manages a
soft empire of small countries bound by economic dependence. Though this
isn’t an empire in the formal sense, it behaves in many ways just like a real
one, and in some ways may be the largest ever known.
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4. “I also realized that my college professors had not understood the true
nature of macroeconomics: that in many cases helping an economy grow
only makes those few people who sit atop the pyramid even richer, while it
does nothing for those at the bottom except to push them even lower.”
(Chapter 5, Page 38)
The main local beneficiaries of this infrastructure development system are

the wealthy families who control the small countries involved. They rake
huge profits from kickbacks, subcontracting, and loan skimming, diverting
government funding for the poor to pay off debt. This makes them even
richer, while the poor struggle with reduced government benefits.
5. “I had lived in the Amazon and had traveled to parts of Java no one else
wanted to visit. I had taken a couple of intensive courses aimed at teaching
executives the finer points of econometrics, and I told myself that I was part
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of the new breed of statistically oriented, econometric-worshipping whiz kids
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that appealed to Robert McNamara, the buttoned-down president of the
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World Bank, former president of Ford Motor Company, and Perkins

Kennedy’s secretary of defense.” (Chapter 9, Page 61)
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Perkins is not a professional economist; his skills lie in marketing and sales.
He knows enough about finance to put together plausible economic growth
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forecasts for the third-world nations that sign on to the program. Convincing
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those countries’ leaders is crucial; accuracy is unimportant as long as there is

lots of optimistic, McNamara-style data.
6. “Ultimately, then, I became convinced that we encourage this system

because the corporatocracy has convinced us that God has given us the right
to place a few of our people at the very top of this capitalist pyramid and to
export our system to the entire world.” (Chapter 9, Page 63)
There is a good deal of “white man’s burden” snobbery in Perkins’s early

self-appraisal. This we’re-better-than-the-world attitude is easy to assume,
especially when you bring miraculous technology to struggling poor
countries. It’s also tempting to look down on the less fortunate, which makes
it easy to take advantage of them.
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Thahim)
7. “I see now that Robert McNamara’s greatest and most sinister contributions
to history were to jockey the World Bank into becoming an agent of global
empire on a scale never before witnessed and to set a dangerous precedent.
His ability to bridge the gaps between the primary components of the
corporatocracy would be fine-tuned by his successors.” (Chapter 14, Page 86)
McNamara is famous for using deep data analysis to undergird his projects,
from improved production at Ford plants to Vietnam war strategy to loans
made by international banks to third-world countries. This focus on numbers
lulls everyone into a false belief that all is well, when in fact one side of the
bargain is getting seriously damaged.
8. “I understood, of course, that the primary objective here was not the usual—
to burden this country with debts it could never repay—but rather to find
ways that would assure that a large portion of petrodollars found their way
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back to the United States. In the process, Saudi Arabia would be drawn in, its
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economy would become increasingly intertwined with and dependent upon
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ours, and presumably it would grow more Westernized and therefore more
sympathetic to and integrated with our system.” (Chapter 15, Page 92)
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The United States modified its EHM approach with the Saudis, who are rich
from oil production and didn’t need the usual loans or fall into arrears and
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become a pawn in the US foreign policy game. Instead, the US arranged

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giant infrastructure projects that reaped lots of Saudi cash, incurred them to a
continuing US presence, and made Saudi Arabia more interdependent with
the US. The overall purpose was to reduce the chance that the Saudis might
instigate yet another oil embargo.
9. “There seemed little doubt that the 1973 oil embargo—which had initially
appeared to be so negative—would end up offering many unexpected gifts
to the engineering and construction business, and would help to further pave
the road to global empire.” (Chapter 15, Page 96)
The US realized that the EHM system could be modified to exploit

opportunities in countries that, like Saudi Arabia, have plenty of wealth to
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spend. Any nation with huge natural resources but poor infrastructure can
become the next target.
10. “Saudi Arabia today is a country of expressways, computers, air-conditioned

malls filled with the same glossy shops found in prosperous American
suburbs, elegant hotels, fast-food restaurants, satellite television, up-to-date
hospitals, high-rise office towers, and amusement parks featuring whirling
rides.” (Chapter 16, Page 104)
Part of the EHM scheme in Saudi Arabia was to get the Saudis used to the
American lifestyle. This, it was hoped, would make inroads into Saudi cultural
resistance: when they, too, play video games and drive Cadillacs, they may
be more willing to see things the American way.
11. “I have found that people warm to you very quickly if you open your eyes,
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ears, and heart to their culture.” (Chapter 18, Page 119)
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Perkins has a knack for making friends everywhere, and his special concern
for the lives and ways of indigenous people give him access where other
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EHMs might be shut out. The key is his respect for, and interest in, his host’s
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culture.
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12. “We, who work every day just to survive, swear on the blood of our ancestors
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that we will never allow dams across our rivers. We are simple Indians and
mestizos, but we would rather die than stand by as our land is flooded. We
warn our Colombian brothers: stop working for the construction companies.”
Indigenous Amazonians in the late 1970s took up guerrilla action against the
oil and engineering companies that altered and damaged their homeland for
the sake of electrification in faraway cities. American agents, including
Perkins, responded in part by spreading a rumor that the guerrillas are
communists.
13. “The republic offered hope to the world. Its foundation was moral and
philosophical rather than materialistic. It was based on concepts of equality
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Thahim)
and justice for all. But it also could be pragmatic—not merely a utopian dream
but also a living, breathing entity. It could make big mistakes, like denying
nonlandowners, women, and minorities the right to vote for more than a
century. It could open its arms to shelter the downtrodden, then force their
children to work under slave-like conditions in its factories.” (Chapter 22,
Page 136)
The American dream of freedom and equality is vulnerable to human greed

and weakness, and the dream has been violated many times in American
history. Perkins believes that today’s corporatocracy, with its exploitation and
domineering ways, is the latest example of the dream denied.
14. “Like many of MAIN’s engineers, these workers were blind to the
consequences of their actions, convinced that the sweatshops and factories
that made shoes and automotive parts for their companies were helping the
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poor climb out of poverty, instead of simply burying them deeper in a type of
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slavery reminiscent of medieval manors and Southern plantations.” (Chapter
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22, Page 138)

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Part of Perkins’s job was to convince his staff, as he once was convinced, that
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they were fighting the good fight and helping people rise out of poverty,
when in fact they were establishing a system that exploited the poor in
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developing countries and benefited only the rich.

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15. “I had been part of the team that crafted the deal of the century, the deal that
changed the course of world history but never reached the newspapers. I
helped create a covenant that guaranteed continued oil for America,
safeguarded the rule of the House of Saud, and assisted in the financing of
Osama bin Laden and the protection of international criminals like Uganda’s
Idi Amin.” (Chapter 23, Page 145)
The US modernization program in Saudi Arabia cemented a political deal that

prevented future embargos in exchange for the US looking the other way
when the Saudis bankrolled terrorists or sheltered mass-murdering dictators
like Idi Amin.
COPYRIGHT 2019
Thahim)
16. “During the 1980s, young men and women rose up through the ranks of
middle management believing that any means was justified by the end: an
enhanced bottom line. Global empire was simply a pathway to increased
profits.” (Chapter 29, Page 176)
The corporatocracy and its death economy evolve increasingly dangerous

techniques for world dominance. One of these is the hiring of a younger,
more cynical and greedy generation of EHMs who have even fewer qualms
than their predecessors.
17. “We shall never know many of the facts about the invasion, nor shall we
know the true extent of the massacre. Richard Cheney, defense secretary at
the time, claimed the death toll was between five hundred and six hundred,
but human rights observers estimated it at three thousand to five thousand,
with another twenty-five thousand left homeless.” (Chapter 30, Page 187)
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US forces invaded Panama in 1989, and the collateral damage was largely
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covered up. The extent of this damage remains unknown to the public.
President Manuel Noriega, the target, was caught, but relations between the
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two countries were severely damaged.

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18. “How many decisions—including ones of great historical significance that

impact millions of people—are made by men and women who are driven by
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personal motives rather than by a desire to do the right thing? How many of
our top government officials are driven by personal greed instead of national
loyalty? How many wars are fought because a president does not want his
constituents to perceive him as a wimp?” (Chapter 30, Page 189)
In 1989 President George H.W. Bush suffered from a perceived “wimp factor,”
and the invasions of Panama and Iraq were carried out at least partly to quell
the idea that Bush was wimpy. It’s implied that many wars are started to
protect a leader’s ego and reputation.
19. “Perhaps it had something to do with 9/11, rising oceans, melting glaciers,
fear, our feelings of mortality. Make all the dough you can, as soon as you
can, and screw everyone else.” (Chapter 38, Page 238)
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Thahim)
The corporatocracy has become even more rapacious of late because its
members sense that their exploitation of nature and its resources is fatally
damaging the environment. Instinctively, then, many players in the death
economy reach for even more resources on the grounds that life is short and
getting shorter by the minute. This cynicism breeds yet more cynicism, and
this exploitation breeds even more exploitation, leading toward a death
spiral.
20. “From inflated home mortgages to college loans, it’s all about servitude to
debt. Not that homes or a college education are bad. Of course not. The
problem is that we all believe we should do anything to achieve the ‘good
life.’ Anything for the American dream. Including burying ourselves in debt.”
Americans are succumbing to the corporatocracy’s creed that endless
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consumerism is good. Buyers overextend themselves and fall into debt until
hi
ha
they are ensnared in the endless cycle of interest payments on top of interest
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payments. In this way, Americans have fallen into the same debt trap as third-
world countries under the EHM system.
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21. “I thought about the core tools we EHMs used in my day: false economics
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that included distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged

accounting books; secrecy, deception, threats, bribes, and extortion; false
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promises that we never intended to honor; and enslavement through debt

and fear. These same tools are used today.” (Chapter 40, Page 249)
The fraud perpetrated on developing nations has spread to the prosperous

West, where the twin tactics of debt and fear used by EHMs are now
endemic everywhere. The corporatocracy has extended its tentacles into
every corner of global society.
22. “But drone operators! They don’t risk their lives; they don’t hear the screams
of the wounded and dying or witness the suffering of innocent victims. They
sit at computer monitors. They aren’t brave. There is nothing heroic about
their jobs. Nor is there anything heroic about a nation that inflicts such
suffering on other people.” (Chapter 44, Page 276)
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Thahim)
The jackals of US foreign policy used to display élan and bravery when
carrying out orders to overthrow or assassinate local leaders who resist US
domination. Today, they simply manipulate a joy stick that causes a faraway
drone to detonate in an enemy’s home. There is no risk or honor in this type
of warfare. This is a sign of the corporatocracy’s continuing moral
degradation.
23. “China’s expansionism, like that of the United States and the other empires of
history, revolves around lending money to countries, plundering their
resources, and paralyzing their leaders with fear.” (Chapter 45, Page 284)
Though China competes with America for third-world development contracts

by offering better deals, the jury is still out on whether China will maintain its
relatively honorable dealings or succumb to US-style arrogance and
exploitation while building its own economic empire.
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ha
24. “To change the world, all we need to do is inspire consumers to love
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companies and products that serve life, and to persuade businesspeople that
if they want their companies and products to be loved, they must commit to
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doing just that.” (Chapter 46, Page 289)

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The future can be one of love and prosperity rather than fear and greed.
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Companies can join this effort, and many plan to do so, with products and
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services that enhance well-being, inclusion, and respect for the environment.
25. “This book has described the four pillars of modern empire: fear, debt,
insufficiency (the temptation to keep consuming more), and the divide-and-
conquer mind-set. The idea that anything and everything is justified—coups
and assassinations, drone strikes, NSA eavesdropping—as long as it props
up those four pillars has shackled us to a feudal and corrupt system. It is a
system that cannot be sustained.” (Chapter 46, Page 293)
Perkins has seen firsthand the damage US foreign policy and corporate
interests have done to the world. This system corrupts and damages
everything it touches, and it denigrates the ideals on which America is based.
It is also unsustainable. The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a
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Thahim)
call to action, a plea to step away from the old attitudes of scarcity and fear
toward a new world of love, natural abundance, and positive change.
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ESSAY TOPICS
1. Economic hit men and jackals are important players in the corporatocracy.
Who are they, and how do they contribute to the system?
2. The book thoroughly details how the EHM system impacts developing
countries. Perkins asserts that this system is now being used to manipulate
America. How so, and how might people resist the corporatocracy in the
United States and abroad?
3. Perkins promised third-world leaders that they would be able to repay

modernization project loans because of a specific feature of those projects.
What is that feature, and what actually happens to that feature during the
term of the loan?
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4. The true purpose of US support for third-world development loans is to cause
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those countries to default. Why does the US want this result?
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5. The US says it favors development loans as part of a global battle for the
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survival of the American way of life. Who or what is the alleged enemy in this
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battle, and what does Perkins consider the real motive behind these
overseas projects?
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6. The usual EHM system didn’t work in Saudi Arabia. Why not, and how did the
US adapt its development plans to fit the Saudi case?
7. Omar Torrijos was aware of the tricks used by EHMs, and he proposed an
alternate way to approach development projects in Panama. Explain this
different approach and how it benefited both sides.
8. Venezuela switched to socialism in 1998, stymieing American development

plans there. Ordinarily, the US would send in the jackals, but a 2002 coup
attempt failed. Then, strangely, Venezuela was relegated to a back burner.
What caused this, and why?
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Thahim)
9. For years Perkins persuaded third-world countries to finance development

projects with unaffordable, predatory loans. Why did he accept this work, and
why did he eventually quit? Would you have accepted such assignments?
Explain your decision.
10. The corporatocracy relies on two things for power. What are those two
things? What does Perkins consider the antidote, and why?
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COPYRIGHT 2019

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CHAPTER SUMMARIES AND ANALYSES 5

Perkins admits he served as an “economic hit man” to convince leaders of poor

him as a potential EHM.

Back in Boston, Perkins accepts a position at an engineering firm, MAIN, that

killed in plane crashes under suspicious circumstances. Perkins realizes that if

In 1989 the US invades Panama, whose president, Manuel Noriega, is captured.

Part 5 details recent developments in America’s corporate takeover of the third

CHAPTER SUMMARIES AND ANALYSES

In 2003 he finally finishes the manuscript and presents it to a major publishing

the book, out in the public, becomes his insurance policy.

Introduction Summary: “The New Confessions”

The key is indebtedness: “debt enslaves us and it enslaves those countries,”

The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is updated throughout, and an

Chapter 1 Summary: “Dirty Business”

He dreams about talking to a third-world leader, promising him wealth if he signs

Chapter 2 Summary: “An Economic Hit Man Is Born”

to Boston; Perkins gets a job at a newspaper.

Chapter 3 Summary: “In for Life”

MAIN has a strict code of confidentiality; “[a]s a consequence, hardly anyone

and, instead, to make them dependent on American interests. Claudine declares

loan the money; his economic forecasts must be bulletproof.

In 1951 Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalizes British

Chapter 4 Summary: “Indonesia: Lessons for an EHM”

military reprisals that kill as many as a half-million Indonesians. In 1968 General

Suharto takes over and continues the dictatorship.

Chapter 5 Summary: “Saving a Country from Communism”

way of electricity” (37).

Perkins wavers between feelings of inspiration and guilt. He tells himself, “I am

To Perkins, this kind of capitalism resembles feudalism. He consoles himself with

Chapter 6 Summary: “Selling My Soul”

Remarkably, Perkins’s immediate ethical objections are ignored by his handlers

Chapter 7 Summary: “My Role as Inquisitor”

Rasy takes Perkins to an Indonesian puppet show, where a single puppeteer

Chapter 9 Summary: “Opportunity of a Lifetime”

Chapter 10 Summary: “Panama’s President and Hero”

government was installed that supported American corporate interests,

suppressed socialist and communist uprisings, and made a few Panamanian

Chapter 11 Summary: “Pirates in the Canal Zone”

Chapter 12 Summary: “Soldiers and Prostitutes”

Chapter 13 Summary: “Conversations with the General”

suppose it assuaged my guilt a bit” (84).

McNamara’s transition from leader of a powerful international corporation to top-

Chapter 15 Summary: “The Saudi Arabian Money-Laundering Affair”

West uses modern technological development to make inroads against traditional

weakness—for beautiful blonds” (100).

Chapter 16 Summary: “Pimping and Financing Osama bin Laden”

When he visits Boston, Prince W. expects a blonde female companion of great

Chapters 7-16 Analysis

world leader in developing statistics-based management systems, from his work at

developments, such as sabermetrics in sports and the wide use of artificial

forecasts merely provided the excuse to move forward.

Chapter 17 Summary: “Panama Canal Negotiations and Graham Greene”

In 1977 Perkins meets novelist Graham Greene, another friend of Torrijos, in

Chapter 18 Summary: “Iran’s King of Kings”

Chapter 19 Summary: “Confessions of a Tortured Man”

Chapter 20 Summary: “The Fall of a King”

Colombia, long considered the keystone of America’s Latin American policy, is

Chapter 22 Summary: “American Republic vs. Global Empire”