Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

John Perkins was for many years one of the world's top economists. He worked directly with the heads of the World Bank, IMF, and other global financial institutions. He quit his work about 20 years ago because morally and ethically, he felt it was wrong to play such a key role in creating world empire at the expense of the less advantaged around the world. After being persuaded and even bribed not to write a book about his experiences, Perkins states, "When 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart." The book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, spent many weeks on amazon.com's bestseller list and has been widely acclaimed. Below is a summary of this landmark book.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is John Perkins’ fast-paced autobiography, which reveals his career as an economist for an international consulting firm. Perkins says he was actually an “Economic Hit Man.” His job was to convince countries that are strategically important to the United States to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development and to make sure that the lucrative projects were contracted to U.S. corporations.

Perkins takes the reader through his career and explains how he created economic projections for countries to accept billions of dollars in loans they surely couldn’t afford. He shares his battle with his conscience over these actions and offers advice for how Americans can work to end these practices which have directly resulted in terrorist attacks and animosity towards the United States.

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