Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, 2004, Excerpts

World leaders are encouraged to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. Those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. The network can draw on them whenever they desire – to satisfy their political, economic, or military needs. In turn, these leaders bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. The owners of U.S. engineering/construction companies become fabulously wealthy.

It is not driven by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel; the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation. We have convinced ourselves that all economic growth benefits humankind, and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits.

Our global culture is a monstrous machine that requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and maintenance, so much so that in the end it will have consumed everything in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour itself.

Economic Hit Man Series

Subprime Lenders

Federal Reserve

Ben Bernanke

Alan Greenspan

Greenspan Warns of 'Unsustainable' Chinese Stocks

http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/24/news/international/greenspan_china.reut/index.htm

May 24, 2007

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Wednesday he feared a "dramatic contraction" in Chinese stocks but said the global economy may be able to shrug off a drop in asset prices. Addressing a meeting in Madrid via teleconference, Greenspan said the recent boom in Chinese stocks could not last. "In the last five years, the world as a whole is a growing faster than at any time in the world's history," he said. "It can't last and it won't last because it's a one-shot adjustment."

Alan Greenspan (born March 6, 1926) is an American economist and was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. Following his retirement as Fed chairman, he accepted an honorary (unpaid) position at HM Treasury in the United Kingdom.

First appointed Fed chairman by President Ronald Reagan in August 1987, he was reappointed at successive four-year intervals until retiring on January 31, 2006, at which time he relinquished the chairmanship to Ben Bernanke.

During the 1950s and 1960s Greenspan was a friend of author Ayn Rand and a proponent of her Objectivist philosophy, which among other things holds that reason, egoism and capitalism are the necessary cornerstones of a free and civilized society. He wrote articles for Objectivist newsletters, and contributed several essays for Rand's 1966 book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. In Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal, Greenspan wrote an essay strongly supporting the gold standard.

Greenspan 1966: ”In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.” [Ayn Rand Disciple]

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence."

"To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men."

"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not be consent, but by compulsion - when you see than in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot."

"Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor."

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money - and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement." 

The United States was opposed to the nationalization efforts, the destabilizing effect of the Czech weaponry that arrived in Guatemala on May 15, 1954 and Arbenz's perceived communism. This led to CIA support for Castillo Armas (CIA codename: "Calligeris") and his army. In 1954, they invaded Guatemala, forcing Arbenz Guzmán to resign

On September 1, Carlos Castillo Armas was formally declared president, ushering in a decades-long period of dictatorial rule. Upon taking office, he disenfranchised more than half of Guatemala's voting population by removing the voting ability of illiterates. Armas had not only cancelled the law that facilitated the nation's land reform, Decree 900, forcing peasants to vacate their newly acquired lands, but, at the CIA's request, formed the National Committee of Defense Against Communism, which is generally acknowledged to be Latin America's first modern death squad.

Economic Hit Man Series

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, 2004, Excerpts

It hardly mattered that Saddam was pathological tyrant, that he had the blood of mass murders on his hands, or that his mannerisms and brutal actions conjured images of Adolph Hitler. The United States had tolerated and even supported such men many times before. We would be happy to offer him U.S. government securities in exchange for petrodollars, for the promise of continued oil supplies, and for a deal whereby the interest on those securities was used to hire U.S. companies to improve infrastructure systems throughout Iraq, to create new cities, and to turn the deserts into oases. We would be willing to sell him tanks and fighter planes and to build him chemical and nuclear power plants, as we had done in so many other countries, even if these technologies cold conceivably be used to produce advanced weaponry.

Iraq presented a vast market for American technology and engineering expertise. The fact that it sits atop one of the world’s most extensive oil fields assured that it was in a position to finance huge infrastructure and industrialization programs. All the major players – engineering and construction companies; computer systems suppliers; aircraft, missile, and tank manufacturers; and pharmaceutical and chemical companies – were focused on Iraq.

In August 1990, the U.S. invaded the oil-rich sheikdom of Kuwait. Bush responded with a denunciation of Saddam for violation international law, even though it had been less that a year since Bush himself had staged the illegal and unilateral invasion of Panama. It was no surprise when the president finally ordered an all-out military attack. Five hundred thousand U.S. troops were sent in as part of an international force.

Saddam actively fostered the modernization of the Iraqi economy along with the creation of a strong security apparatus to prevent coups within the power structure and insurrections apart from it. Ever concerned with broadening his base of support among the diverse elements of Iraqi society and mobilizing mass support, he closely followed the administration of state welfare and development programs.

At the center of this strategy was Iraq's oil. On June 1, 1972, Saddam oversaw the seizure of international oil interests, which, at the time, dominated the country's oil sector. A year later, world oil prices rose dramatically as a result of the 1973 energy crisis, and skyrocketing revenues enabled Saddam to expand his agenda.

Thanks for the Memories

Economic Hit Man Series 

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, 2004, Excerpts

George Schultz was secretary of the treasury and chairman of the Council on Economic Policy under Nixon, served as Bechtel president, and then became secretary of state under Reagan. Caspar Weinberger was a Bechtel vice president and general council, and later the secretary of defense under Reagan. Richard Cheney served as secretary of defense under George H. W. Bush, as Halliburton president, and as U.S. vice president to George W. Bush. George H. W. Bush, began as founder of Zapata Petroleum Corp., served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under presidents Nixon, Ford, and was Ford’s CIA director.

Reagan was most definitely a global empire builder, a servant of the corporatocracy. He catered to men who shuttled back and forth from corporate CEO offices to bank boards and into the halls of government. He served the men who appeared to serve him but who in fact ran the government – men like Vice President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State George Schultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Richard Cheney, Richard Helms, and Robert McNamara, He advocated what those men wanted: an America that controlled the world and all its resources, a world that answered to the commands of America, a U.S. military that would enforce the rules as they were written by America, and an international trade and banking system that supported America as CEO of the global empire.

The Bechtel Group, inc. is a prime example of the cozy relationship between private companies and the U.S. government. Bechtel was the United States’ most influential engineering and construction company. Its president and senior officers included George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, who despised Torrijos because he brazenly courted a Japanese plan to replace Panama’s existing canal with a new, more efficient one. Such a move not only would transfer the ownership form the United States to Panama but would also exclude Bechtel from participation in the most exciting and potentially lucrative engineering project of the century.

Bechtel – loaded with Nixon, Ford, and Bush cronies, pulls the strings of the Republican Party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechtel_Corporation

Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest engineering company in the United States, ranking as the 9th-largest privately owned company in the U.S. With headquarters in San Francisco, Bechtel had 40,000 employees as of 2006 working on projects in nearly 50 countries with $20.5 billion in revenue.

The Bechtel family has owned Bechtel since incorporating the company in 1925. Bechtel's size, its political clout, and its penchant for privacy have made it a perennial target for journalists and politicians since the 1930s. Bechtel has maintained strong relationships with officials in many United States administrations, including those of Nixon, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. The company also has strong ties to other governments, particularly the Saudi Royal Family.

Recently, the company has come under criticism for alleged mismanagement of the Big Dig project, its financial links to the bin Laden family, and the manner in which it received Iraqi rebuilding contracts after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Bechtel's long involvement with oil, power, and water overseas has become a focus of criticism by the growing anti-globalization and environmental movements.

The United States prints currency that is not backed by gold, Indeed, it is not backed by anything other that a general worldwide confidence in our economy and our ability to marshal the forces and resources of the empire we have created to support us.

The ability to print currency gives government immense power. It means that government can continue to make loans that will never be repaid. By the beginning of 2003, the United States’ national debt exceeded a staggering $6 trillion and was projected to reach $7 trillions before the end of the year – roughly $24,000 for each U.S. citizen. Much of this debt is owed to Asian countries, particularly to Japan and China.

As long as the world accepts the dollar as its standard currency, this excessive debt does not pose a serious obstacle. However, if another currency should come along to replace the dollar, and if some of the United States’ creditors should decide to call in their debts, the situation could change drastically. The United States would suddenly find itself in a most precarious situation.

The global empire depends on the fact that the dollar acts as the standard world currency, and the United States Mint has the right to print those dollars. Thus, we make loans to countries like Ecuador with the full knowledge that they will never repay them; in fact, we do not want them to honor their debts, since the nonpayment is what gives us our leverage, our pound of flesh.

A decision by OPEC to substitute the euro for the dollar as its standard currency would shake the empire to its very foundations.

Economic Hit Man Series

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, 2004