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    Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: John Perkins and the Death Economy

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    2026年6月1日
    PoliticsFinance & EconomicsHistory & Society

    Explore the chilling story of John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Learn how the NSA and MAIN recruited Perkins into a global death economy.

    Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: John Perkins and the Death Economy

    Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: John Perkins and the Death Economy最佳语录

    “

    You aren't conquering a country with soldiers; you’re doing it with accountants and economists. It’s a strategy that turns economic development into a tool for imperial expansion by trapping nations in a web of debt they can never pay back.

    ”
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    The new confession pf an economic hitman.

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    知识来源
    The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary
    link
    https://www.supersummary.com/the-new-confessions-of-an-economic-hit-man/summary/
    "The Marketplace Is a Greater Democracy Than the Political Arena" » PopMatters
    link
    https://www.popmatters.com/new-confessions-economic-hit-man-perkins-2495445401.html
    March 7, 2005 To: Readers of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Re: The Veracity of John Perkins’ Accounts Fr: Steven Piersanti, President and Publisher, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Some people have found John Perkins’ accounts in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man to be so shocking and troubling that they have questioned whether his accounts are true. John himself has been absolutely unequivocal that everything written in the book is factual and is the true story of his life. John has clearly and unwaveringly affirmed the veracity of his accounts numerous times: in the book itself, in every media interview that he has done, and throughout the dozens of hours that he spent working through the manuscript page-by-page with me as part of our editorial process. Contrary to what some people have assumed, there is a great deal of evidence to support the veracity of John’s accounts in Confessions. This evidence includes numerous historical documents (see the attached copies of some of these documents) that confirm many aspects of John’s work; extensive research that many other people have done that support most of John’s principal allegations; confirmation from one of the persons who is in the best position to validate the veracity of John’s story; confirmations from others who knew and worked with John at Chas. T. Main; and the assessments of a number of people who have had long acquaintance with John and/or who have had in-depth discussions with him about the specifics of his accounts. 1. It is indisputable that John was employed for more than nine years by Chas. T. Main, Inc. Many documents, some of which are attached, confirm this. 2. It is indisputable that, during the time that John was employed there, Chas. T. Main (“MAIN”) was one of the largest and most internationally active firms in contracting, planning, and managing many types of development projects around the world. Attached is a copy of the “ENR 400” rankings of “The Top 400 Contractors” in 1982. These annual rankings were then and continue to be today leading rankings in the industry; they are compiled by ENR (also known as Engineering News Record), which is a top industry trade publication that is published by The McGraw-Hill Companies. Chas. T. Main was the third-ranked company on the ENR 400 in 1982, with total revenues of $5.7 billion, which placed it just ahead of The Bechtel Group, Inc. The international focus of MAIN’s development projects is demonstrated by the fact that $5.2 billion of its revenue was for foreign contracts, which was the greatest foreign contract revenue of any U.S. company on the ENR 400. 3. It is indisputable that Chas. T. Main carried on all of the types of projects in all of the countries that John details in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Attached is a copy of a MAIN brochure that goes into great detail about MAIN’s services and projects, which match precisely what John describes in Confessions. There is also much further documentation of these projects in the MAIN company newsletter (Mainlines) and in articles that John wrote and speeches he gave during the period he was employed at MAIN; see, for example, the Mainlines’ story describing “a comprehensive 25-year electrification plan which would bring electricity to all the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” 4. It is indisputable that John was personally involved in all of the types of projects in all of the countries that he details in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. For example, attached are copies of articles in the MAIN company newsletter (Mainlines), articles published by Power Engineering (“The Engineering Magazine of Power Generation”), and a copy of a paper presented by John at the Fourth Iranian Conference on Engineering in 1974 that all substantiate John’s involvement in the types of projects and the countries that he details in Confessions. Various other such articles and papers are available if more confirmation is needed of this point. 5. It is indisputable that John held a key position at Chas. T. Main and played a leading role in many development projects. He is referred to in many of these historical documents as MAIN’s “Chief Economist and Manager of the Economics and Regional Planning Department.” For example, a November 1978 story in MAIN’s company newsletter, Mainlines, not only confirmed John’s leadership of the Economics and Regional Planning Department and his title of Chief Economist but also confirmed many aspects of John’s account about his job roles and accomplishments at MAIN: Looking over the faces behind the desks, it’s easy to tell that Economics and Regional Planning is one of the most recently formed and rapidly growing disciplines at MAIN. To date, there are about 20 specialists in this group, gathered over a seven-year period. . . . While several people were influential in getting the economics group started, it basically came about through the efforts of one man, John Perkins, who is now head of the group. Hired as an assistant to the head load forecaster in January, 1971, John was one of the few economists working for MAIN at the time. For his first assignment, he was sent as part of an 11-man team to do an electricity demand study in Indonesia. . . . About a year later, John became the head load forecaster and, as the demands from clients and institutions such as the World Bank grew, he realized that more economists were needed at MAIN. “While MAIN is an engineering firm,” he said, “the clients were telling us we had to be more than that.” He hired more economists in 1973 to meet clients’ needs, and, as a result, formed the discipline which brought him the title of Chief Economist. This Mainlines story is reproduced in the book and contains various other confirmations of John’s accounts. 6. Given all of the above, it is indisputable that John Perkins was an insider in the enormous build-up of the international development business led by U.S. firms in the 1970s. And this is the number one thing that has made Confessions of an Economic Hit Man so compelling – the fact that we finally have the account of a “true insider” (as many readers and reviewers have commented) in the international development business. 7. Numerous books and studies have supported John’s principal allegations of the corruption, excesses, waste, overlending, fraud, looting, and money laundering in the international development business. See, for example, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, by Robert Baer; Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia, by Thomas Lippman; The Blood Bankers: Tales from the Underground Global Economy, by James S. Henry; The Global Debt Crisis: America’s Growing Involvement, by John H. Makin; Overexposed: U.S. Banks Confront the Third World Debt Crisis, by Raul Madrid; Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, by Walden Bello, D. Kinley, and E. Elinson; Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order, by Richard J. Barnet and John Cavanagh; American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, by Kevin Phillips; Globalization and Its Discontents, by Joseph Stiglitz; One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism, by William Greider; When Corporations Rule the World, by David Korten; and The Case Against the Global Economy, edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith. These books and many others – as well as hundreds of articles and studies – have provided extensive documentation of the principal allegations in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. For example, here are some of the conclusions published in an article in the March/April 2004 issue of Across the Board, which is the official magazine of the prestigious business organization, The Conference Board. This article, titled “Where the Money Went: How Did Developing Countries Wind Up Owing $2.5 Trillion?,” was an excerpt from The Blood Bankers, which offers extensively researched and well documented support for John’s principal allegations: The fact is that conventional portraits of the global development crisis are economists’ fairy tales. They leave out the blood and guts of what really happened – all the payoffs for privatizations, fraudulent loans, intentionally wasteful projects, black market “round-trip” transfers, arms deals, insider deals, and the behind-the-scenes operation of the global-haven banking network that has facilitated all this and more. They ignore the fact that in the mid-1970s, and again in the mid-1990s, repeated warnings of deep trouble were ignored: Irresponsible overlending, poorly conceived projects and privatizations, phony back-to-back loans, outright looting of central-bank reserves, and massive capital flight
    link
    https://www.lowimpact.org/wp-content/uploads/veracitymemo.pdf
    Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
    link
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_economic_hitman
    John Perkins (author)
    link
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perkins_(author)

    常见问题

    John Perkins is the author of The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, a book detailing his role as an Economic Hit Man (EHM). Recruited through a process involving the National Security Agency and the engineering firm MAIN, Perkins describes his work as part of a system designed to trap nations in debt. Rather than focusing on altruistic international development, his role involved pulling back the curtain on what he calls the death economy, where global powers use financial leverage to control developing countries.

    The recruitment of John Perkins was a calculated process that began while he was still a college student in Boston. The National Security Agency (NSA) monitored his personality profile to determine his suitability for the EHM role. Later, while working at the engineering firm MAIN, he was approached by a mysterious woman named Claudine. This high-stakes recruitment process was designed with chilling precision to bring him into a world of international finance that functioned more like a spy thriller than a standard job.

    The death economy is a term used by John Perkins to describe a predatory system of international development. In this system, the primary goal is not to lift poor countries out of poverty but to trap entire nations in a web of debt. Perkins argues that this modern history is documented through his experiences, revealing how ambitious individuals are used to promote a global agenda that prioritizes financial control and debt over genuine altruism or the well-being of the countries involved.

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    核心要点

    1

    The Recruitment and the Seduction of the Economic Hit Man

    2

    The Art of the Rigged Forecast and the Debt Trap

    4:16
    3

    When the Hit Fails and the Jackals Arrive

    6:26
    7:38
    4

    The EHM System Comes Home to the United States

    8:55
    9:48
    10:17
    5

    The High Cost of Whistleblowing and the Shadow of the Jackals

    11:32
    6

    From the Death Economy to a Life Economy

    14:05
    7

    The Global Spread and the New Players in the Game

    16:19
    16:44
    8

    Your Roadmap for Action in a Corporate World

    18:03
    18:30
    9

    Wrapping Up the Confessions

    21:05
    21:20
    21:28

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