The money will end up in the bank accounts of some thieves.
The money will end up in the bank accounts of some thieves.
DusTY-FooT-pHiloSophER 9 years ago
They're not given the money to the African leaders to do their own thing like always. Rather, they are coming in to invest and to see to it that the money goes exactly to where it is intended.
They're not given the money to the African leaders to do their own thing like always. Rather, they are coming in to invest and to see to it that the money goes exactly to where it is intended.
The Trucker 9 years ago
Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the IMF
from Global Exchange
WHAT IS THE IMF?
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created in 1994, shortly before the end of World War II, at a conference in Bretton Wood ... read full comment
Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the IMF
from Global Exchange
WHAT IS THE IMF?
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created in 1994, shortly before the end of World War II, at a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Both institutions are now based in Washington, DC. The IMF was designed to promote international economic cooperation and provide its member countries with short term loans in order to trade with other countries (achieve balance of payments). During the 1980's, the IMF took on an expanded role of lending money to "bailout" countries during financial crisis. This gave the IMF leverage to begin designing economic policies for over 60 countries. Countries have to follow these policies to get the IMF's "seal of approval" to get loans, international assistance, and even debt relief. Thus, the IMF has enormous influence not only in structuring the global economy, but also on real-life issues such as poverty, environmental sustainability and development. The IMF is one of the most powerful institutions on Earth--yet few know what it is. 1) The IMF has created a system of modern day colonialism that SAPs the poor to fatten the rich
The IMF, along with the WTO and the World Bank, is directing the global economy on a path of greater inequality and environmental destruction. The IMF's and World Bank's "structural adjustment policies" (SAPs) ensure debt repayment by requiring countries to cut spending on education and health; eliminate basic foods and transportation subsidies; devalue national currencies to make exports cheaper; privatize national assets; and freeze wages. These policies increase poverty, reduce countries' ability to develop strong domestic economies and allow multinational corporations to exploit workers and pollute the environment.
2) The IMF caters to wealthy countries and Wall Street
Although industrialized countries have not borrowed from the IMF in twenty years, rich countries dominate decision making. Voting power is determined by the amount of money that each country pays. The U.S. is the largest shareholder with a quota of 18%. U.S., Germany, Japan, France and Great Britain together hold about 38% of the vote. Each of these countries appoints their own representative to the executive board, while other groups of countries elect a representative. The U.S. Executive Director is Karin Lissakers, and she works closely with Lawrence Summers and the U.S. Treasury Department to design policy for the IMF. The disproportional amount of power held by wealthy countries translates into decisions that benefit wealthy bankers, investors and corporations from industrialized countries at the expense of sustainable development. Is it a surprise that the IMF then uses its leverage over cash-strapped developing countries to force them to open up to powerful transnational corporations?
3) The IMF is imposing a fundamentally flawed development model
Unlike the path followed by most industrialized countries, the IMF forces countries from the Global South to prioritize export production over the development of a diversified domestic economy. Nearly 80% of all malnourished children in the developing world live in countries where farmers have been forced to shift from food production for local consumption to the production of crops for export to the industrialized countries. The IMF also requires countries to eliminate tariffs and provide incentives for multinational corporations - such as reduced labor and environmental protections. Small businesses and farmers can't compete with large multinational corporations, resulting in sweatshop conditions where workers are paid starvation wages, live in inhumane conditions, and are unable to provide for their families. The cycle of poverty is perpetuated, not eliminated.
4) The IMF is a secretive institution with no accountability
The IMF is funded with taxpayer money, yet it operates from behind a veil of secrecy. For the most part, members of affected communities do not participate in designing loan packages. The IMF works with a select group of central bankers and finance ministry staff to decide polices without input from other government agencies such as health, education and environment departments. Furthermore, the IMF has resisted attempts to open up to public scrutiny and independent evaluation. The IMF has made elites from the Global South more accountable to First World elites than their own people.
5) IMF policies promote corporate welfare
To increase exports, countries are encouraged to give tax breaks and subsidies to export industries. Assets such as forestland and government utilities (phone, water and electricity companies) are sold off to foreign investors at rock bottom prices. Some examples: In Guyana, an Asian owned timber company called Barama received a logging concession that was 1.5 times the total amount of land all the indigenous communities were granted. Barama also received a five-year tax holiday. The IMF forced Haiti to open its market to imported, highly subsidized U.S. rice at the same time it prohibited Haiti from subsidizing its own farmers. A US corporation called Early Rice now sells nearly 50% of the rice consumed in Haiti. Haitian farmers have been forced off their land to seek work in sweatshops, and people are poorer than ever.
6) The IMF hurts workers
Many SAPs require changes in labor laws, such as eliminating collective bargaining laws and lowering wages in order to provide conditions favorable to attracting foreign investors. The IMF's mantra of "labor flexibility" permits corporations to fire at whim and move where wages are cheapest. According to the 1995 UN Trade and Development Report, employers are using this extra "flexibility" in labor laws to shed workers, rather than create jobs. In Haiti, the government was told to eliminate a statute in their labor code that mandated increases in the minimum wage when inflation exceeded 10%. By the end of 1997, Haiti's minimum wage was only $2.40 a day, just one-fifth of the minimum wage in 1971 in real terms. Workers in the U.S. are also hurt by IMF policies by having to compete with cheap, exploited labor. Two years ago, the IMF's mismanagement of the Asian financial crisis plunged South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and other countries into deep depression that led to the creation of 200 million "newly poor." The IMF advised countries to "export their way out of the crisis." Consequently, the dumping of Asian steel in U.S. markets resulted in the layoffs of over 12,000 steelworkers.
7) The IMF's policies hurt women the most
SAPs make it much more difficult for women to meet their families' basic needs. When education costs rise due to user fees, girls are the first to be withdrawn from schools. User fees in public health facilities make it unaffordable to those who need it most. The shift to export agriculture also makes feeding one's family increasingly difficult. Women have also become more exploited in the private sector workforce as regulations are rolled back and sweatshops abound. The general lack of economic opportunity has meant an increase in prostitution and other black market jobs and indentured servitude.
8) IMF Policies hurt the environment
IMF loans and bailout packages are paving the way for natural resource exploitation on a staggering scale. The IMF does not consider environmental impacts of lending policies; and environmental ministries and groups are not included in policy making. The focus on export growth to earn hard currency to pay back loans means unsustainable liquidation of natural resources. Government cutbacks inevitably target the environmental ministry as one of the first agencies to come under the budget axe. This happened with the bailouts of Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia--countries that are renowned for their great biodiversity.
9) The IMF bails out rich bankers, creating a moral hazard and greater instability in the global economy
The IMF pushes countries to dismantle trade and investment rules, as well as raise interest rates in order to lower inflation. The removal of regulations that might limit speculation has greatly increased capital investment in developing country financial markets. More than $1.5 trillion crosses borders every day. This capital is short-term, unstable, and puts countries at the whim of financial speculators. The Mexican 1995 peso crisis was partly a result of these IMF policies. When the bubble popped, the IMF and US government stepped in to prop up interest and exchange rates, using taxpayer money to bailout Wall Street bankers for their high-risk investment. This encourages investors to continue making risky, speculative bets, increasing the instability of national economies. Furthermore, during the bailout of Asian countries, the IMF restored rich people's profits while implementing policies that threw people out of work and increased poverty. Asian governments were required to assume the bad debts of private banks, thus making the public pay the costs and draining yet more resources away from social programs and real development.
10) IMF bailouts deepen, rather then solve, economic crisis
During financial crises, such as with Mexico in 1995 and South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, and Russia in 1997, the IMF stepped in as the lender of last resort to "bail out" countries with huge loan packages. Yet the IMF bailouts in the Asian financial crisis did not stop the financial panic--instead, the crisis deepened and spread to more countries. The policies imposed as conditions of these loans were bad medicine, causing layoffs in the short run and undermining development in the long run. In South Korea, the IMF sparked a recession by raising interest rates and lowering the currency, resulting in more bankruptcies, increased unemployment, and government spending cuts. Under the IMF-imposed economic reforms after the peso bailout in 1995, the number of Mexicans living in extreme poverty increased more than 50% and the national average minimum wage fell 20%.
In John Perkin's book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies. [includes rush transcript]
John Perkins describes himself as a former economic hit man–a highly paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.
20 years ago Perkins began writing a book with the working title, "Conscience of an Economic Hit Men."
Perkins writes, "The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits–Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.
John Perkins goes on to write: "I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop."
But now Perkins has finally published his story. The book is titled Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. John Perkins joins us now in our Firehouse studios.
John Perkins, from 1971 to 1981 he worked for the international consulting firm of Chas T. Main where he was a self-described "economic hit man." He is the author of the new book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!
JOHN PERKINS: Thank you, Amy. It’s great to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Okay, explain this term, "economic hit man," e.h.m., as you call it.
JOHN PERKINS: Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring — to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful. We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It’s been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It’s only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you become one? Who did you work for?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation’s largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950’s, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was _Time_’s magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed — well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn’t have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.
AMY GOODMAN: Okay. Explain the company you worked for.
JOHN PERKINS: Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan — let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador — and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure — a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, "Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil." And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It’s an empire. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It’s been extremely successful.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. You say because of bribes and other reason you didn’t write this book for a long time. What do you mean? Who tried to bribe you, or who — what are the bribes you accepted?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I accepted a half a million dollar bribe in the nineties not to write the book.
AMY GOODMAN: From?
JOHN PERKINS: From a major construction engineering company.
AMY GOODMAN: Which one?
JOHN PERKINS: Legally speaking, it wasn’t — Stoner-Webster. Legally speaking it wasn’t a bribe, it was — I was being paid as a consultant. This is all very legal. But I essentially did nothing. It was a very understood, as I explained in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, that it was — I was — it was understood when I accepted this money as a consultant to them I wouldn’t have to do much work, but I mustn’t write any books about the subject, which they were aware that I was in the process of writing this book, which at the time I called "Conscience of an Economic Hit Man." And I have to tell you, Amy, that, you know, it’s an extraordinary story from the standpoint of —- It’s almost James Bondish, truly, and I mean—-
AMY GOODMAN: Well that’s certainly how the book reads.
JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, and it was, you know? And when the National Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power and money, to win me over. I come from a very old New England family, Calvinist, steeped in amazingly strong moral values. I think I, you know, I’m a good person overall, and I think my story really shows how this system and these powerful drugs of sex, money and power can seduce people, because I certainly was seduced. And if I hadn’t lived this life as an economic hit man, I think I’d have a hard time believing that anybody does these things. And that’s why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to John Perkins. In your book, you talk about how you helped to implement a secret scheme that funneled billions of dollars of Saudi Arabian petrol dollars back into the U.S. economy, and that further cemented the intimate relationship between the House of Saud and successive U.S. administrations. Explain.
JOHN PERKINS: Yes, it was a fascinating time. I remember well, you’re probably too young to remember, but I remember well in the early seventies how OPEC exercised this power it had, and cut back on oil supplies. We had cars lined up at gas stations. The country was afraid that it was facing another 1929-type of crash — depression; and this was unacceptable. So, they —- the Treasury Department hired me and a few other economic hit men. We went to Saudi Arabia. We -—
AMY GOODMAN: You’re actually called economic hit men —e.h.m.’s?
JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, it was a tongue-in-cheek term that we called ourselves. Officially, I was a chief economist. We called ourselves e.h.m.'s. It was tongue-in-cheek. It was like, nobody will believe us if we say this, you know? And, so, we went to Saudi Arabia in the early seventies. We knew Saudi Arabia was the key to dropping our dependency, or to controlling the situation. And we worked out this deal whereby the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S. government securities. The Treasury Department would use the interest from these securities to hire U.S. companies to build Saudi Arabia — new cities, new infrastructure — which we've done. And the House of Saud would agree to maintain the price of oil within acceptable limits to us, which they’ve done all of these years, and we would agree to keep the House of Saud in power as long as they did this, which we’ve done, which is one of the reasons we went to war with Iraq in the first place. And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn’t buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals. Jackals are C.I.A.-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn’t work, they perform assassinations. or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren’t able to get through to Saddam Hussein. He had — His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how Torrijos died?
JOHN PERKINS: Omar Torrijos, the President of Panama. Omar Torrijos had signed the Canal Treaty with Carter much — and, you know, it passed our congress by only one vote. It was a highly contended issue. And Torrijos then also went ahead and negotiated with the Japanese to build a sea-level canal. The Japanese wanted to finance and construct a sea-level canal in Panama. Torrijos talked to them about this which very much upset Bechtel Corporation, whose president was George Schultz and senior council was Casper Weinberger. When Carter was thrown out (and that’s an interesting story — how that actually happened), when he lost the election, and Reagan came in and Schultz came in as Secretary of State from Bechtel, and Weinberger came from Bechtel to be Secretary of Defense, they were extremely angry at Torrijos — tried to get him to renegotiate the Canal Treaty and not to talk to the Japanese. He adamantly refused. He was a very principled man. He had his problem, but he was a very principled man. He was an amazing man, Torrijos. And so, he died in a fiery airplane crash, which was connected to a tape recorder with explosives in it, which — I was there. I had been working with him. I knew that we economic hit men had failed. I knew the jackals were closing in on him, and the next thing, his plane exploded with a tape recorder with a bomb in it. There’s no question in my mind that it was C.I.A. sanctioned, and most — many Latin American investigators have come to the same conclusion. Of course, we never heard about that in our country.
AMY GOODMAN: So, where — when did your change your heart happen?
JOHN PERKINS: I felt guilty throughout the whole time, but I was seduced. The power of these drugs, sex, power, and money, was extremely strong for me. And, of course, I was doing things I was being patted on the back for. I was chief economist. I was doing things that Robert McNamara liked and so on.
AMY GOODMAN: How closely did you work with the World Bank?
JOHN PERKINS: Very, very closely with the World Bank. The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we’re going to feel secure in this country again and that we’re going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we’ve put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that. I believe the World Bank and other institutions can be turned around and do what they were originally intended to do, which is help reconstruct devastated parts of the world. Help — genuinely help poor people. There are twenty-four thousand people starving to death every day. We can change that.
AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, I want to thank you very much for being with us. John Perkins’ book is called, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
The money will end up in the bank accounts of some thieves.
They're not given the money to the African leaders to do their own thing like always. Rather, they are coming in to invest and to see to it that the money goes exactly to where it is intended.
Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the IMF
from Global Exchange
WHAT IS THE IMF?
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created in 1994, shortly before the end of World War II, at a conference in Bretton Wood ...
read full comment
Thanks for the explanation Trucker