Drive countries with commodity into dependency-inducing debt via loans for contracts to US companies
The people at the top won't change it, but around the world people are waking up. John Perkins wants to contribute to this by educating people about today's global situation and in particular the character of US policy: he was himself an economic agent for many years in many countries around the world. He describes his own activities and those of agents for the US economy and US politics in states around the globe: their method: to coerce states where raw materials of interest to the US economy lie, to decide on infrastructure projects that make no sense for the countries, to give the contracts for these to US companies and to finance them through international loans that drive the country into a dependent debt and finance the contracts. They were transferred directly from the US public budgets to the US companies and not to the countries. In this way, they are forced to surrender their raw materials to the US economy at low prices and to subjugate their public budgets to US interests: To invest little in education and health or food security and building their own economies and agriculture. Perkins describes the methods he and the other agents used: Persuade, corrupt leading politicians and families, threaten them with assassination, violence and war if they refused the offers, and then make it happen.
John Perkins' realistic insights into corporatocracy, as he calls it, i.e. the world of big finance and multinational corporations, were gained as the chief economist of a major American consulting firm, as an NSA intelligence officer and as an economist for a now defunct Boston consulting firm called MAIN. His task: to construct extremely optimistic forecasts on the economic development of emerging developing countries. Seduced by the prospect of an economic boom, these countries were to build dams and power plants, motorways, ports and airports, industrial parks. Since they could not do this on their own, they were offered generous loans in the billions.
