Since reading Daemon I’ve been on the start of a book kick. Well a book kick for me, which means actually reading more than one book a year that isn’t Harry Potter.
I just finished up Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. This is a book that that came up quite often as an audible pick on This Week in Tech and that I have been curious about since hearing the premise. The book is a recounting of Perkins’ life as what he dubs an economic hitman. Basically in the 70s he was sent into countries that had large amounts of natural resources (usually oil) and convinced the countries to take on massive debt loads from organizations like USAID to develop their infrastructure for the expansive growth in their future. Of course, the expansive growth numbers that Perkins and his team came up with are incredibly inflated, thus the infrastructure projects are more than what is actually needed. So the country takes on the debt, pays US corporations (think Bechtel, Halliburton, etc) to actually build out this infrastructure, then when the expansive growth doesn’t happen the country is saddled with debt they can never pay off and has to work out deals with the US which usually involve their natural resources.
The entire concept is just mind boggling. Corporations convince countries to take on debt and hire the corporations to implement plans they know are ridiculous. The corporations get paid and the countries are left to suffer in the debt. Perkins recounts these tales and how he got into this crazy business over the course of the book. He also talks about how he eventually got out of it and how the Economic Hitman role has evolved. It’s a very interesting look into US history abroad and I think is a definite must-read. Perkins’ tales of the people he meets on his travels and how grows throughout this career were very interesting and kept me reading. So if any of this interests you at all, I would say head out and pick up the book. I was able to grab a copy at Half-Price Books, although Amazon has it for only a couple bucks more honestly.
Next up, I have just started reading Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. This one is going pretty quickly as well and it’s from the library so I should have another quickie review up in a couple weeks.
