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Confessions of an Economic Hitman
John Perkins
- Unabridged
Narrator: Brian Emerson
Length: 9 hours and 19 min.
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This is the inside story of how America turned from a respected republic into a feared empire.
"Economic hit men," John Perkins writes, "are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder."
John Perkins should know; he was an economic hit man. His job was to convince countries that are strategically important to the U.S., from Indonesia to Panama, to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development and to make sure that the lucrative projects were contracted to Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown and Root, and other United States engineering and construction companies. Saddled with huge debts, these countries came under the control of the United States government, World Bank, and other U.S.-dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks, dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission.
This extraordinary real-life tale exposes international intrigue, corruption, and little-known government and corporate activities that have dire consequences for American democracy and the world.
©2004 John Perkins; (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Review
5/11 registered users found this helpful
Amateurish, and poorly narrated.
03/07/2007
John Perkins appears to be a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. The conspiracy of which he writes is backed up by one conversation with a character that is presumably there only as a plot device, and no evidence beyond what he just 'knows'. What worries me more is that, like any good lie, much of this book is true, and so people may actually believe it. The CIA did bad things. Large (often, but not exclusively) American conglomerates also did bad things. Organisations may have had ulterior motives, and they also wanted to profit. But that's it, and it is very well documented. That may be unlovely, but it is not a conspiracy. Only at the beginning of the last quarter of the book is the cold war (against which much of this activity was taking place, rightly or wrongly) even explicitly mentioned, and summarily dismissed. And Mr. Perkins anti-globalisation worldview and his change to environmentalism (conveniently after his millions were made) assumes that the poor around the world would much rather be living happy stone age existences than be burdened with medicine, progress, jobs, and opportunity. What patronising nonsense. It isn't even written well. A last word on the narration: Brian Emerson is execrable. He has a cadence which makes you wonder if he isn't just a particularly sophisticated computer voice as the emphasis is frequently wrong and it is all reminiscent of a liturgical chant. His pronunciation of non-English words belies the author's stated linguistic abilities and interest in travel. All told, my first (and hopefully only) one star review. Avoid.
Most Recent Reviews
What a world we live in
07/07/2008
Everybody should know this. It should change your life and certainly open your eyes.
This book gives hope for a better future
11/07/2007
Where Hegemony and Survival by Noam Chomsky scratches the surface of the problem, Confessions of an Economic Hitman opens the lid and shows the truth in depth. It is the book that Hugo Chavez should have waved from the UN tribune. It is truly amazing to discover that the people that realise what is really happenning or want to know what is really happenning are so many. The high position of this book on Audible bestsellers is both deserved and encouraging. The arguments against Noam Chomsky are known and he is easily discredited in a PR campaigns as 'leftist'.
Now, what are they going to say to John Perkins?
'The missile is not invented...'
