As the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman describes it, corporatocracy “exploits desperate people and is executing history’s most brutal selfish and ultimately self-destructive resource-grab.”

BY ALGAMAR A LATIPH
Contributed to Bulatlat
Vol. VIII, No. 5, March 2-8, 2008

John Perkins, the author, narrated on how the “corporatocracy” (which comprises corporations, banks and government) created the U.S. global empire with the media, school and business as the legitimizing entities that perpetrate that system. Foreign debt and political-economic dependency were used to make countries subservient to exploitations.

Economic Hit Man (EHM), wrote Perkins, is a “highly paid professional who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development…Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoff, extortion, sex, and murder.” Under Robert McNamara, the World Bank became the agent of global empire he added.

“EHMs provides favors. These takes the form of infrastructure…encourages world leaders to become part of the vast network that promotes US commercial interests. In the end, those leaders will become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty.”

As EHM, he worked to justify international loan to less-developed countries and funnel back the money to U.S.. This became possible as the usual condition of the loan is that U.S.’ contractors and engineering companies will be the ones to build the project. Under the scheme the money never leaves the U.S. soil as it is simply transferred from one U.S. local bank to another.

The foreign loan is bloated and is designed to bankrupt the country that received them so that “they will be beholden forever to their creditors, and so they would present an easy target when we need favor including military bases, UN vote, or access to oil or other natural resources.”

The EHMs describe themselves as, “we’re a small club…we’re paid-well paid-to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars…to satisfy our political, economic and military needs…meanwhile, the owners of U.S. engineering and construction companies become very wealthy.” Referring to his employer, Chase T. Main, an engineering company, and its competitors: Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone & Webster, Brown & Root and others, Perkins said, each of these companies has their own EHMs.

He noted that Former Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger were high-ranking officials of Bechtel while Vice President Dick Cheney was a former President of Halliburton. A month after the March 2003 Iraq Invasion, Bechtel was awarded with a major contract in the rebuilding of Iraq, the same with Halliburton, involving billions of dollars. Bechtel operates in more than 50 countries while Halliburton in 120 countries.

When the EHM fails, the CIA-sanctioned jackals (assassins) step in to finish the job. This was the case of President Jaime Roldos and Omar Torrijos of Ecuador and Panama, respectively, who died in a plane crash, said the author. Adding that if the EHMs and jackals fail to deliver, the military is sent, as what happened in Iraq, Panama and Granada.

Perkins’ job brought him to Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. The objective in each country varies. In 1971, Indonesia was perceived to be falling into Communist hands. Panama was part of the equation because of U.S. interests in the Panama Canal.

In 1974, the U.S. negotiated with the Saud family in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo because it cannot afford a future oil embargo.

The U.S.-Saudi Arabia Joint Commission was created with the objective of “maximizing payouts to U.S. firms and making Saudi Arabia increasingly dependent on the United States”. Here, it is not a case of bankrupting Saudi Arabia with foreign debts but it “assures that a large portion of petrodollars found their way back to the U.S. so that its economy will become increasingly intertwined with and dependent with the U.S..”

The scheme is that Saudi petrodollars would be used to purchase U.S. government securities then the “the interest compounding on billions of dollars of the kingdom’s oil” will be used to pay U.S. firms such as Halliburton, Bechtel etc. who will obviously get the contracts to modernize the Saudi Arabia.

On the other hand, Washington’s tempting offer to the Saudi family was “total and unequivocal US political and –if necessary—military support, thereby ensuring their continued existence as the rulers of the country.”

As EHMs and jackals failed in Iraq in the 80s and 90s, the military invasion in March 2003 became inevitable, the author recounted. In Iran, U.S. firms lost millions of dollars when the Revolutionary government of Ayatollah Khomeini expropriated its assets in the country without compensation.

Books such as The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of New World Order by Samuel Huntington, The End of History and the Last Man by his student, Francis Fukayama, or The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Freidman, which I read years ago, claimed that the U.S.’ self-imposed moral obligation is to expand liberty, equality, freedom and free-enterprise through out the world.

Ironically, as the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman describes it, corporatocracy “exploits desperate people and is executing history’s most brutal selfish and ultimately self-destructive resource-grab,” Perkins concluded. (Bulatlat.com)