JOHN PERKINS
Presented by Ardavast Avakian

AZG Armenian Daily #160
05/09/2007

Agent of Change

"People ask me all the time why are people in Bolivia and Peru
throwing stones at U. S. embassies after all we do, to help them
out. The truth is our embassies are not there to help the people:
they are there to help our big corporations and commercial interests."

John Perkins’s best-selling book, Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man reads like a spy thriller. It is not: The nonfiction works give
an insider’s view into the international wheeling and dealing that
is designed to keep first world countries on top and third world
countries down. Most Americans believe foreign aid is altruistic and
serving the ends of democracy and liberty around the world. In fact,
that isn’t true."

One problem: His work was making him sick. Although well respected
in the international community, Perkins was actually a corporate con
artist, or an economic hit man, as he calls his former job. He says
that his clients and assorted governments hoped that the ambitious
projects didn’t work out and that the loans given to the countries
kept them indebted. "It was like walking into a ghetto," he says,
"and handing out credit cards with a $50,000 limit, knowing that
people couldn’t repay it."

The reasons for extending the loans were twofold: First, in order to
receive the huge loans, the countries often were forced to contract
with a corporation on the World Bank’s short list – the Halliburtons,
the Bechtels, the Veolias – so those corporations immediately cashed
in from the loans.

Second, if the country was strapped by unmanageable debt – worsened
if the project that was supposed to generate income didn’t work out –
then they would not only have to spend most of the government treasury
paying back the loan, but they would owe favors, which they might be
asked to pay back with natural resources, by hosting training camps for
rebels, or by swinging votes. The World Bank and the United States in
particular, he says, set up the loans so the countries would open up
their jungles to our oil companies, vote with us, send troops where
we tell them to, and become part of our empire.