Currently Reading

Right now my makeshift bookmark is buried in the pages of Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. Interesting stuff. He claims to have worked for a private company involved in a US conspiracy to saddle less developed nations with debt in order to gain political and military clout. The situation would start out with economists such as himself making exaggerated growth charts for a poor country. Loans would be made from the World Bank and the IMF based on the strengths of these predictions for infrastructure projects such as dams, roads, and power plants. The contracts for these projects would be rewarded to American firms such as KBR, Haliburton, and Bechtel. This would funnel most of the money back to the US, leaving the poor nation saddled with debt and at the mercy of the US. In and ideal situation, a commodity such as oil would be exported from the poor country. Half of the money would go to an American oil company extracting the oil, a quarter of the money would be used to pay the interest on the new debt, and 25% would be left for the country that had the oil to start out with. A large chunk of this would be pocketed by a president that was sympathetic to, and protected by, the US. Welcome to the Evil Empire.