Spotlight on: Compassionate Capitalism

Due to my time commitments, no new material today and possibly for the next few days.

After reading John Perkins' 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman', I set out to try to prove his thesis and to look for patterns in today's global affairs that would prove his thesis.

It wasn't hard...

John's Webpage is here: www.economichitman.com.

Here is John's main point:

That is what we EHMs do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure —electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco.

Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global empire.

It really is not hard to notice the pattern:
First, "experts" show up in a targeted country - usually, the country is poor but has natural resources we, the USA and corporations, want.

Then, the experts lie and spin to the country's rulers so that the targeted country takes out huge loans from the World Bank to finance infrastructure projects: highways, ports, airports, roads, etc.

Third, the country with the loans finds out that they cannot possibly repay the loans.

That's when the fun begins - now, the corporations and the US government has them by the balls...

The biggest criticism that was made of John Perkins' 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' was that the author did not provide citations nor sources. Which, since the book is a fucking memoir, is not surprising - no memoir provides citations and sources used, as by definition a memoir is written using only one source - the author's memory!

However, some people cannot accept that, and so dismiss the book as fantasy, as fable (just like blogs are dismissed out of hand in favor of the mainstream media, for example).

So, I looked for patterns in today's news that would point out to the practices spotlighted in John Perkins' book. And like I said before, it wasn't hard...


I urge you, if you haven't already, to check out my Compassionate Capitalism and Humanitarian Aid: Bolivia then and Iraq now article.