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“We economic hit men have been the ones responsible for creating this first truly global empire. And we work many different ways,” said John Perkins.

“We … are the first line of defence.  We go in, we try to corrupt the governments and get them to accept these huge loans which we then use as leverage to basically own them.  If we fail … then the second line of defence is: we send in the jackals.  And the jackals either overthrow governments or assassinate them.”  If that fails then they send in the military.

Formerly, as the chief economist for Chas. T. Main, John Perkins, advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, US Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. He worked directly with heads of state and CEOs of major companies.  He is the author of the 2015 book ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’.

Perkins says that he was an “economic hit man” for 10 years, helping US intelligence agencies and multinational corporations cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving US foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.  However, after several years struggling internally over the role he was playing in crippling foreign economies, he quit his consulting job.

Perkins defined economic hit men as:

Highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign ‘aid’ organisations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources.

Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalisation.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Concise Summary

The video at the start of this article is an excerpt, beginning at timestamp 25:00, from the two-hour documentary ‘Zeitgeist: Addendum’ by filmmaker Peter Joseph.  You can watch the full documentary HERE.  The documentary takes excerpts from a 2008 interview titled ‘John Perkins: Zeitgeist: Addendum Extended Interview’. 

Perkins began his interview by explaining what he called “corporatocracy.” Corporatocracy, Perkins said, is this group of individuals who run our biggest corporations and they really act as the Emperor of this Empire.  They control our media – either through direct ownership or advertising.  They control most of our politicians because they finance their campaigns – either through corporations or through personal contributions that come out of the corporations. They’re not elected.  They don’t serve a limited term, they don’t report to anybody, and they “really are very much running things.”

At the very top of the corporatocracy, Perkins said, you can’t tell whether a person’s working for a private corporation or the government because they are always moving back and forth: 

“You’ve got a guy who one moment is the president of the big construction company, like Haliburton, and the next moment he’s Vice president of the United States … You have the moving back and forth, through the revolving door.

“It is invisible a lot of the time. And its policies are carried out by our corporations on one level or another and then again, the policies of the government are basically forged by the corporatocracy and then presented to the government, they become government policy. So, it’s an incredibly cosy relationship, in a very dangerous relationship.”

This seems to be the same as what Nations in Action describe as the shadow government.

You can watch the full interview with Perkins in the video below.