This book – “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” – written by a wealthy
retired consultant, is notable in that it is decidedly
anti-globalization, in contrast to most of the business-related
bestseller fair in the past few years. I can’t decide whether the book
actually goes so far as being anti-capitalist. Or maybe I’m just in
denial about finishing a book that’s that hypocritical.

Anyway, having read it, quoting Usher, these are my confessions:

My first reaction was that I wanted to become an economic hit man. I
mean, as the author himself observed, it’s a lot like being James Bond.
Except much safer and you get paid more.

It should be obvious even to those who haven’t read the book that it’s
not intended to have that effect. However, there’s a subtext throughout
that, even though the author claims remorse now, he reveled in the power
and prestige attached to many of his roles along the way, including
those he filled even after having left his “hit man” job. And there’s
little evidence that he misused that power. Nor did he intentionally
mislead anyone. Rather, he regrets having helped put certain 3rd-world
nations in debt to the World Bank and IMF. That’s like one of the
current generation of executives at Ford Motor Company saying he regrets
the effect he’s had I-5 traffic through downtown Seattle. Get over
yourself, right?

In any case, in the context of Hit Man, it all seems a little shallow
coming from a rich guy, retired, living in Florida.

But then I realized that the book actually made me want to be Dick
Cheney. I mean, the author singles him out repeatedly as one of the
top-tier major powerbrokers. Duh. Much like the author himself, Cheney
doesn’t seem to have done anything specifically wrong. He just accepted
jobs that he should apparently now feel guilty about. We’re left to
conclude that if Cheney were to take the opportunity of his impending
political retirement to write “Confessions of an Influential and
Powerful American Politician and Executive,” he would be forgiven.

But then it finally dawned on me that, rather than being an executive at
a major contractor such as Halliburton or Bechtel, I actually want to be
the founder of such an entity. Those companies are huge and have a
combined age of 200 years. What a legacy it would be to start something
that has that sort of impact, that employs that many people for that
length of time!

(While it’s apparent that the book is written from the perspective of
someone who dedicated many years of his life to climbing the Economic
Hit Man professional ladder, it must be noted that the author is also an
entrepreneur, having founded an energy company, and then having
begrudgingly – yeah right – sold it to an oil company for a sizable
profit.)

So if the author’s intent was to inspire me in this way, he could have
picked a different title and cut the last couple of chapters (I read the
paperback version). Otherwise, he missed the mark.

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/045228708

1/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208051240&sr=1-1

http://www.halliburton.com/Default.aspx?navid=402&pageid=714

http://www.bechtel.com/history.html

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