104: John Perkins | Debt Traps & Confessions Of An Economic Hitman

🎙️: https://atlasgeographica.com/john-perkins-confessions-of-an-economic-hitman/

🍻☕: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ryanhogg

The following is a conversation with John Perkins, the author behind Confessions Of An Economic Hitman.

As the former chief economist of the consultancy firm, Chas. T. Maine, John had an incredible career flying into and then out of a myriad of developing countries facilitating huge debt trap projects in the likes of Indonesia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and more.

Therefore, in the vein of kleptocracy, capital flight and corrupt institutions, this podcast is a slice of the worldview of the author of Confessions Of An Economic Hitman, John Perkins. 

Newsletter 📋 🔑 - https://atlasgeographica.com/subscribe
📷 Instagram & Twitter 🐦 
-----
Time Stamps With John Perkins

• 00:00 – Introduction.
• 01:47 – What Is An Economic Hitman?
• 08:39 – The Economic Hitman In Indonesia.
• 13:13 - Jackals & Chinese EHM's.
• 22:18 – The Economic Hitman In Saudi Arabia.
• 29:33 – What Is Debt Trap Diplomacy (Sri Lanka, Brazil, Ecuador & Rafael Correa)
• 42:31 – Financial Secrecy & Offshore Finance.
• 48:17 - How Much Do You Miss EHM?
• 53:55 – How Do You Explain The Commercial Success Of Confessions Of An Economic Hitman?
• 58:18 – Who Are Todays Economic Hitmen?
• 1:01:11 – Are EHM Always Bad?
• 1:04:50 – A Moment In Your Life You Can’t Believe You Were A Part Of.

-----

Links To John Perkins

• John Perkins Website
• John Perkins Books

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The following is a conversation with John Perkins, the author behind Confessions of an Economic Hitman. As the former chief economist of the consultancy firm, Charles T. Main, John had an incredible career flying into and then out of a myriad of developing countries, facilitating huge debt trap projects in the likes of Indonesia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and more. In this conversation with John, we speak about some of the following. An explanation for what is an economic hitman. John speaking about the CIA Jungles, who today's economic hitmen are, some examples of debt trap diplomacy, his role in Saudi Arabia, and then of course much more as well. I think this episode of the podcast is better consumed in conjunction with episode 48, the author of Light Bank is Jim Henry, which accounts for literally hundreds of these debt trap projects that the likes John played a hand in. In addition to Jim Henry, you can try Nicholas Jackson, episode 96, which explains the plumbing for the cancerous world of offshore finance, which informs how so much money can slip through the cracks. Or you can try episode 51 with Bradley Hope, who is the co-author of Billion Dollar Whale, and one of the journalists who exposed the one MDB Malaysian sovereign wealth fund scandal, which is an archetypical example of the excesses financial secrecy enables. Or you could try 78 with Oliver Ballo, the Russian oligarch's biggest pain in the arse, author of Moneyland and as well butler to the world, which pins the United Kingdom at the center of the whole cancerous world of financial secrecy. Or go down under with me and Nathan Lynch, episode 106, on how Australia became the biggest money launderer for Chinese dirty cash, and as well an amazing explanation for the role that property plays in this whole cancerous world of offshore. So in the vein of kleptocracy, capital flight, and corrupt institutions, here is a slice of the worldview of the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, John Perkins. John, what is an economic hitman?

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Well, Ryan, I think it's fair to say that we economic hitmen have created what today we can call a death economy, an economic system that's failing us. We can get into that more if you want in a later. But the in the way we did this and do and continue to do it is uh I my job, and my my official title, incidentally, was chief economist at a major consulting firm, Economic Hitman, was kind of, you know, it's like calling a uh CIA agent a spook. But my my job and and that of my staff uh was to identify countries with resources our corporations wanted, like oil, and then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations. But the money never went to the country. Instead, uh it went to our own corporations to build big infrastructure projects on that country. The country held the debt, they had to pay the interest and to take responsibility. They didn't ever see the money. It went to our corporations, the the Halliburton's and the Bechtels and the Stone and Websters and the General Electrics and so forth to build um electrical power systems, industrial parks, highways, ports, infrastructure. And the companies made a lot of money. You know, there was these were very profitable contracts for them. A few wealthy people in the countries benefited. These were the people whose families owned industry, commerce, the banks, but the majority of the people suffered because money was uh diverted from health care and education and other social services to pay the interest on the debt. I didn't know that at the beginning. I thought we were doing the right thing because the statistics show that when you make these investments and build these infrastructure projects, the economy grows. But the economy, as we measure it, is measured by gross domestic product, GDP. And as it turns out, that really measures how well the rich are doing. It doesn't measure how well the the country's actually doing. I mean, and again, we I can back that up if you want me to later. But so we would build these projects, and in the end, the country couldn't repay its debts. So we'd go back in, and usually under the guise of the International Monetary Fund, and and demand that the country allow our corporations to go in and exploit their resources, oil or whatever, uh, with very few environmental or social regulations and at cut rate prices. We would demand that they allow us to build a military base, us being the United States, on their soil, vote with us against Cuba and at the United Nations, or or some such things. And we made these demands. Basically, it was a form of colonialism. And incidentally, I should say that the alternative for presidents of these countries to accepting these loans, if they refused to accept them, they all knew that behind us stood people we called jackals, who were CIA assets, and these are people who've overthrown governments or assassinated their leaders. The United States has admitted to this with the Yende of Chile and Mossadegh of Iran and Arbenz of Guatemala, Mossadek of uh uh Mossadek of Iran, uh Lumumba of the Congo, Ziem of Vietnam, and on and on. The list goes on. I mean, it's it's pretty impressive. You basically I had the opportunity to tell the president of a country, hey, take these loans and you and your family are going to benefit from them a l a lot. You're gonna make a lot of money off this. Uh, your people are gonna suffer. But the alternative is uh we could overthrow you or assassinate you.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

How much of a caricature is this understanding of what an economic hitman might be? You fly into country X, Y, or Z, uh typically a developing nation. You come in with an army of chonometric reports and uh basically environmental reports saying how if you were to construct you know, X electrical grid here, it would increase the prosperity of people by X percent. Um the only hinge is that it's gonna cost you quite a lot of money, but hey, we can also finance you to make this happen, um, which is gonna be good for you politically, and then as well, I guess you can grease the palms of your family and friends if if if need be. You go ahead, you do that. It turns out that after the construction has come in at two, three times the budget, you realize that all of the um upside and promise that you are going to deliver is actually kind of on a bed of economic lies, and then the country cannot repay the interest on this loan that you give it, so you come in later and say, All right, well, we'll repay the debt for, say, an ownership of that natural resource that we had built there in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Yeah, that's very accurate, with one exception, and that is that uh statistically, usually the country does show that it's better off. So the World Bank can publish all these reports saying that its loans have increased GDP in Ecuador or or you know Sierra Leone or wherever the loans were made, um, and in fact the GDP has increased. But the majority of the people have suffered, they haven't gained. Here's an example. If you take the United States, three individuals here in the United States, three individuals have as much wealth as half the population of the United States. If those three individuals made 10% on their assets last year, and half the country lost 3%, and the rest of the country just stayed equal, it would look as though that the GDP would increase by uh uh close to four percent. So it would look as though the country had prospered when in fact only three individuals had prospered. Half the country suffered, and half the country just stayed the same. Three individuals made ten percent, and it looked as though everybody gained four percent. And if that's true in the United States where ten where three individuals own as much as half the country, what about countries where one individual or th or three individuals own ninety-five percent or ninety-nine percent?

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Oh my god. Are there examples of that extreme inequality?

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Yes, absolutely. Uh, you know, we f we we find that in the in the you know what we call the lesser income countries. I don't even like the word developed versus undeveloped at the or developing at this point, because let's face it, the people we refer to as developed countries are not like the United States, we're not developed environmentally speaking, or socially speaking for that matter. We may be developed economically speaking, but I prefer lower income and higher income. A lot of the lower income families, you have a few families who control ninety percent of the wealth.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

For example, where?

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Well, you can take Colombia, there's a there's a five families, some people say fifteen, but it depends on how you measure them and how you call families that basically control everything there. That may change now that uh for the first time in their modern history they've elected, you know, a person who's very left-leaning, uh, Guatemala, uh many places in in throughout Africa, many of these countries that have these long histories of European colonialism, uh, where they that form of colonialism, the Europeans got out of Africa for the most part, uh, but the form of colonialism that was under the Europeans was just transferred to a few very powerful uh African leaders who've taken advantage of that situation. So we we see this sort of thing throughout the world. And yet it is not included in the measurements. This is not talked about in the reports. What the reports show is that gross domestic product uh has benefited from these loans.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Could you uh expand off my caricature of what an economic hitman was and explain how you did exactly that in one of the myriad examples? The book is broken down into different chapters of countries that you uh were in. My favorite personally is Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, but if you have one that speaks directly to that caricature as a first-hand real-world example.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Well, in Indonesia is a great example, uh, where where we were were struggling, we would the the balance of power had shifted, you know, there'd been a President Sukarno and President Suharto, and um we were at the time that I went in, which was in the early 70s, that when I first went into Indonesia, um Indonesia had uh potential of a lot of oil, which we wanted, and it also was the largest country in the world with a Moslem it has the largest Moslem population of any country in the world. And the government of Indonesia was flirting very very much with both the Soviets and uh Maoist China at the time. And even though they ostensibly were allies of ours, there was this incredible flirtation going on. They were using this as leverage, and so my job was to go in and convince the government to accept these huge loans to hire American companies to build, in this particular case, a a highly integrated electrical system between West Java, Central Java, and East Java, and a number of other big projects. And basically, you know, here here's the caricature, you know, and this is a caricature, it's not it I'm simplifying this, but basically what I would do is go in and talk to somebody, it might be the president or it might be the minister of finance or minister of planning, and I'd basically say, hey, you know, in this hand, I've got in today's terms it would be billions of dollars for you and your family and all your friends, if you accept these loans, you're gonna you're all gonna do really well. And we had ways of legally, legally the United States stands bribing people. I can go into that if you want more, but but also the economy is gonna grow. The electricity is gonna really help the industries that you own, where you're per you're you're currently having to self-generate. You have your own generating plants in your big industries, and they're not and it's very expensive for you. So in this hand, I I have these billions of dollars, if you sign off on this loan, that are gonna benefit you and your friends and families very, very much. And in this hand, I've got a gun pointed right at you. And I didn't actually have a gun, I never carried a gun, but I knew that the jackals were right behind me, and they knew it too. And and so, you know, these presidents or or ministers of finance or whoever you're dealing with are in a very difficult situation. Oh, and incidentally, I can give you lots of reports that you can hand out to your people press that'll show that these loans are going to create uh growth in GDP. And everybody believes GDP means everybody prosperous. And even at the for most of the time I was in that job, I believed that that was prosperous too. I I didn't understand the nuances of GDP because in business school and through reports of the World Bank and so on, we're taught that GDP means growth, it means prosperity for everyone. No, it it it's it's a growing pie for it's it's a growing piece of the pie for the very wealthy. I mean they're just taking more and more and more of the pie. And yet it's we don't know that. And there's a hell of a lot of people right now working in the same business that have no idea that that's the case. They still see GDP as as the as the standard measurement.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

John, um I I've never really fully understood the necessity of the threat of jackals, the threat of assassination, and the threat of violence. Why isn't just you as a person representing Charles T. Maine as the chief economist coming in and promising all of this political upside, all of this economic upside, why isn't that significant enough of an argument uh with all the countries you could be offering it to as well? Why was the threat of jackals necessary? Because that just generates all the conspiracy.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Well, because we're asking these people ultimately to to sell their country's resources at very cheap prices. We're asking them, and and they can figure this out, we're asking them to be part of an American empire. We're asking them to be to be to be colonized once again. And here so two of my clients didn't didn't accept the loans. Uh Jaime Roldos, president of of Ecuador, and uh Omar Torrijos, head of state of of of Panama. And they they stood up to the system. They said, no, they had tremendous integrity. They said we're not going to buy into this. And they knew very well about the jackals. They were very aware of what happened in neighboring uh Guatemala with with Arbenz and with in Chile with with Allende, two presidents that have been taken out by jackals. Um but they still had tremendous integrity, and they both died in very suspicious airplane crashes. I have no doubt, and most of people who've looked into this have no doubt that those were CIA orchestrated. There's never been a smoking gun, there's no proof, but you know, airplane crashes are the best way to assassinate someone because all the evidence gets blown up with the plane. Um but once that happened to these two, and it it happened in 1981 to it was three months apart that this happened, that sent an incredibly strong message throughout the world, uh especially Latin America, but throughout the world they knew what would have happened. And any president or who was who was on the border between working with us or turning against us and turning toward the Soviets or the Chinese uh saw this and said, geez, you know, I don't wanna uh I don't want to take any risks with the Americans. They're they're dangerous. So very effective.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

I th I get the sense that the sort of criticism and skepticism for the confessions of an economic hitman um argument is that the threat of uh prime minister and presidential assassination is just so much more unthinkable for us now. Is is that an explanation for why it feels like the threat of violence and the threat of jackals might not necessarily map onto the way current economic hitmen and debt trap diplomasts might be operating?

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Not at all. Uh uh President Zelaya of Honduras was taken out in 2009. Uh there was a coup against President Correa of Ecuador. Uh I you know, we we went into Afghanistan, we went into Iraq, we, you know, we've we we've you know we've taken out governments in Egypt, and uh it's it it continues in a in a very, very big way. I I think people, if anything, understand this better. And and those criticisms that originally came out when the first book came out in 2005, came out in 2004, but uh I don't hear them anymore. You know, we've we've since then had all the WikiLeaks leaks, and we've had you know, we've had the CIA exposed by Snowden, Edward Snowd Snowden, and and uh and there's been a lot of other books, a lot of other evidence that that indicates this. And a lot of people have come forward, you know. Henry Kissinger himself has admitted to the deep involvement of the CIA in several of these countries. So I I think that if if anything, leaders are perhaps more aware of this now than ever, although increasingly they're looking to China as an alternative because China does not have the reputation of taking out leaders or in any way interfering with governments. In fact, they make a very big point out of we're not going to interfere with your governments very different from neoliberal economics, which is what the World Bank uses, that that outright says, we want to have control over your government and its economic policies. The Chinese say no, we we're not interested in doing that. So so as a as a as a result, the w the world is basically is in the process of transferring uh these these these debts to China, and and I'm not trying to defend China. China's China is ultimately trying to do the same thing. It's trying to take resources and build up its own economy back home. But it does ha it does present a different perception to the world, which in to some degree is backed up by its its history of not being involved in in assassinations or coups. You know, and and again, I want to say so, you know, everybody knows that the United States has been deeply involved with trying to overthrow the government of Venezuela and Nicaragua, and you know, whether or not you believe in these governments, and I'm not defending those governments at all, the fact of the matter is countries often resent the fact that the United States attempts to meddle in their politics.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Um there's a fantastic book called The Second Continent by Howard French. I'm sure maybe you consulted for the book on China they have coming up, but he just tells the story of how um a couple of different Chinese interests are sort of uh wiggling their way into the halls of power and as well not no not necessarily the halls of power, um the the the heights of industries in various countries throughout Africa. And the overwhelming message that he makes is just that they're only there for economic interest. They give zero th there is no consideration of how moral a government might be, or what a cultural expectation might be, or what the religion of the local place is. It's just what is the economic interest, and maybe that is a separate um I don't know, way of going about things from the neoliberal more American style that you experienced during the time you're in AHM.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Yeah, Ryan, it's uh I think the the Chinese say this as as an you know as a selling point. So uh you know, if I if you really want to simplify things, the message that American economic hitmen and European uh gave was if you want your country to prosper, take out a big loan from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations, what's called the Washington Consensus, and hire our companies to build big infrastructure projects in your country and subscribe to neoliberalism. That means uh do the policies that we recommend, which basically neoliberalism is lowering taxes on the rich and lowering wages and social services on everybody else and privatizing things. So it's it's very much oriented toward private corporatization and it's trickle down, trickle-down economics that says, you know, if you make the rich richer, then everybody's gonna benefit, which just has proven not to be the case. The Chinese uh say something very similar in terms of they say, if you want your country to prosper, take these big loans from China's banks and uh in and hire our companies, Chinese companies, to build big infrastructure projects in your country and uh become part of the new Silk Road, an international trading network where you can trade with the whole world, and we will not interfere with your government in any way. We do not believe in neoliberal economics. That's not what helped us put pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. And so we're not going to interfere with you in any way whatsoever. And, you know, the United States will respond by saying, Well, that means that you're supporting dictators and bad governments and so on and so forth, and the Chinese would then say, Well, don't you think some of the countries you've supported are dictatorships? And certainly they are, Egypt being one of them, look at Saudi Arabia, look at so many. So this is there's this perceptional warfare that's going on. But for many countries that have experienced years, decades, maybe even centuries of colonialism in Africa and Latin America and the European powers, they're tired of this. They're tired of countries meddling in their in their government systems and and in their mor m morality and in their ethics and in their and and the United States does that, and Europe has done that. China makes a point of not doing that. I'm not sure that China is sincere in all of that. I'm not sure that they actually will keep those promises, but it's a very attractive proposition.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

So I just want to um I'm uh I'm noticing the time constraints, but I'd love to ask you about Saudi Arabia, the debt traps, and then China and Belt and Road. So, first of all, just because it was my favorite sort of experience from the book, Confessions of Bank of Hitman, could you talk about your experiences in Saudi Arabia?

SPEAKER_02 22:25

Well, Saudi Arabia was an exception to what I've been describing, and that Saudi Saudi Arabia didn't need to take out loans. Saudi Arabia had the resources through oil. But what we needed to do was convince Saudi Arabia that it it needed to modernize, and Saudis were very aware of this. When I went into Saudi Arabia in the early 70s, uh, you know, one of the first things that I experienced was this huge herd of goats that wandered around this capital city of Riyadh. What are those goats doing? And the answer was they're collecting garbage. Well, they were eating garbage. That was the garbage system. And here it was one of the wealthiest countries per capita in the world at the time, and yet it didn't have a garbage collection system that worked other than goats. And so and the Afghans were very embarrassed by this, and they wanted to modernize. So they were hiring my company. We were the first to go in and and look at particularly at electrifying the system, elect uh building a bigger electrical system.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Well wasn't that just so thrilling to have been involved in that?

SPEAKER_02 23:31

It was interesting. It was it was fascinating, you know, and and I had three guys who who who who had to spend many months there traveling to every every population center in the country to see what they how they were how they were producing energy. Were they just burning uh camel dung uh you know to heat up to cook their food? Or did they have a guy on a motor on a motor on a bicycle, stationary bicycle, generating electricity? And there were some of this. But we had to record all of that and then figure out how to design a an integrated electrical system that would serve the whole country, because that's what the Saudis wanted, and they had the money to pay for it. But you know, we convinced the Saudis, so part of the deal was that we convinced the Saudis that uh all the petrol dollars, and remember, part of this has come because Saudi Arabia led OPEC in a boycott, uh, wouldn't sell oil to the world, and it caused a huge recession in the United States and Europe uh in the early 70s. So uh the uh Treasury Department came to me and and said, and and it came to other consultants too, but came but particularly my company was the first to get the big contract with the Treasury Department. They said, you know, this can't happen anymore. We've got to convince Saudi Arabia that they can no longer hold us hostage for oil. So we struck this deal that I write about in the book as the Saudi Arabia Money Laundering Affair, SAMI, Saudi Arabia Money Laundering Affair. And you know, the deal was that the Saudis would reinvest their petrodollars in U.S. government securities, most of their petrol dollars. And the U.S. government would use the interest from that, or a large share of the interest from that, to hire American companies to westernize Saudi Arabia, to build power plants and to build cities, to build desalinization plants, and to build petrochemical plants. And and it was also agreed that Saudi Arabia would and NOPEC would not sell oil for anything other than the dollar. We'd gone off the gold standard in 71 when Nixon took us off the gold standard, and now the dollar was floating freely and it was scaled for the Treasury Department, so they wanted Saudi Arabia, and so it the oil became the new standard. They went off the gold standard.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

What an unbelievably influential economic decision.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

Well, yes, and at the same time, we agreed to defend the royal family of Saudi Arabia to stand by them, keep them in power, and we've done that. I mean, look at the thing with Kasoji, you know, recently. The you know we haven't we have not confronted them, and and President Biden just went there and the fact that uh many of the um 9-11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, yet you invade Pakistan and Afghanistan.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Well not Pakistan, sorry, Afghanistan.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Iraq and Afghanistan. Yeah, yeah, of course. And we and and and and and when the planes were not allowed to fly anywhere in the United States, there were a few planes taking members of the of the of the royal family, the House of Saud, out of the United States back to Saudi Arabia. Yes, we stood by that and we've protected them. And when Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to invade Saudi, we went to war with Iraq.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

How does it make you now how does it make you feel now to look at Saudi Arabia as potentially one of the most technologically developed places in the world?

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Yeah. Well it's you know I don't know how do I feel about it? Um I think that it's tragic that a country with so much wealth, and this includes neighboring countries, is so uh anti-women, is so uh medieval in in in many regards, and you know, treats a lot of its workers terribly. Um you know, it's just i I think that's tragic, but I don't know that the United States or anybody else should be interfering with that. I think it's up to the people to do something. And these are these are very, very difficult arguments to make. These are hidden at ancient traditions and religions. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what my I've got a as you know, I've got a book coming out in early 2003 that deals with the economic hitmen of China, and I think what we really need to do is focus our attention on climate change. We need to uh focus our attention on this death economy that we've created that's destroying life as we know it on this planet, and transform that into a uh into a life economy. Did I did I mix my words there with the death economy destroying the planet? Yeah, we need to transform into a life economy that'll pay people to clean up pollution, to regenerate destroyed environments, to recycle, to develop technologies that don't ravage the planet. And we need to understand that if you look at uh GDP, uh almost half of the world's GDP i i is is provided by the the the two countries of China and the United States, something like forty-seven percent, and an equal amount of the pollution. So these two huge nations are the are the big economic driving forces of the world and also the biggest polluters in the world, both of us. And to me, the the the the the real challenge here, what we really need to focus on is how can we bring these two countries together to recognize that nobody's nobody thrives on a dead planet, and that we've got to change our economic policy. China and the United States can disagree about Taiwan and Afghanistan and and the Uyghurs and the indigenous people of the United States. I mean, they they say what we talk about, the Uyghurs, they say similar things about our indigenous people and and and other minorities. So we can disagree on everything, but let's agree that we've got to move out of an economic system that is destroying life as we know it on this planet.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Something that um we've kind of been speaking around, but like is explicitly the work of uh the economic hitman as you write about it in the book, is this notion of sort of debt trap diplomacy, and I'm sure this is something that is central to your upcoming China book. Um can you describe what is debt trap diplomacy?

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Well, it is a s it's it's central to all of it. Yeah, it's what economic hitmen do. You know, so you put you you load these countries with huge amounts of debt that they use to pay your companies to do something for them, and your companies get rich, and then they're caught in the trap of having all this debt, which means they owe you. You know, it's the old mafia thing, Ryan. You know, hey, hey Ryan, oh you you you your daughter's getting married and you need a hundred thousand dollars for your daughter's wedding, or you need ten thousand dollars. Well, here it is. No, no strings attached, Ryan. This is it. I like you. You're a good guy. I like your daughter. Here's here's your here's your money. And then a year later, hey, Ryan, you know, uh Jack over here, uh he's pissing me off. Uh you know, he's he's infringing upon my territory. He's trying to move drugs faster than I move drugs. Take him out. And you're like, well, I can't uh uh Ryan, you owe me. You owe me. You remember that? You remember that? You owe me. You owe me big time. If you don't take him out, well, what's your life worth? So you know, it's that same death trap d debt trap uh economics uh is the same thing done on a national basis. And it's gone on throughout history. You know, you can go way back to the Persian Empire, the Chinese, early Chinese Empires, or the Roman or Greek empires, and you have that kind of same sort of thing where sometimes the debt wasn't money, it was favors owned, favors owed. Uh so that exactly what I said, you know, I'm the king, I just took over your territories, but hey, Brian, now that I've taken over your territory, I'm gonna offer you my daughter in marriage, but you've got to help me defeat the neighbors on the other side of you. You gotta you've gotta join forces with me. You've got to do what I want you to do. It's a very old system of of it of type of enslavement.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Uh I I like uh that quote you use quite a lot throughout the book, and you just sort of referenced it there, not explicitly, but you mentioned it always as being a game as old as empire, this idea of um yeah, yes. But um l can we bring it maybe to a real-world example debt track.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Well, we like to talk about Sri Lanka as being the due to the Chinese debt, and that's sort of there's certainly a lot of truth to that, but we've been putting Sri Lanka in debt for a long time before that too, the World Bank. I mean there's been a lot of that going on. Yeah, Sri Lanka and its its uh family that that runs the country have uh put the have continually taken on big amounts of debt, and and presumably there's a lot of that that's gone into corruption for them and their family, that they've skimmed a lot off the top. But the country's in deep debt now. And yes, the the the the one that the that the Western press likes to valley who is this port that was built with Chinese debt. But again, it wasn't so the Chinese, unlike we, the Chinese didn't really go in and say, hey, you build this port. Um they let Sri Lanka say we want a new port, and maybe some of the Chinese advisors also indicated that a port would be a good thing. But basically, you know, uh China took advantage of the the the the family that rules China of wanting to have this port and wanting to have a lot of other things. So yeah, right now Sri Lanka owes a lot of money to China, but the whole debt debt trap uh scenario has been going on for some time there. What's your other example?

SPEAKER_00 33:31

There was a uh hydro dam in Brazil called the uh Balbina Dam, and this is um taken from Jim Henry's Blood Bankers, which uh we I spoke to about off-air and the audience knows about, but it's just this unbelievable document that highlights hundreds of cases of not explicitly debt trap, but mostly sort of um corrupt offsh offshore financing deals, uh, you know, for fake infrastructure and projects and so forth. But this Balbina Dam basically came in at um I'll just give the scorecard quickly. You know, it came in at three times the price, late, half of its operational potential. It cost two thousand square miles of desolation of Amazon rainforest, the eradication of dozens of indigenous wildlife, the displacement of tribes, it caused twenty-eight times the methane gas of an equivalent coal-fired plant, and then twenty years later had zero use. So just an unbelievably costly uh And whose debt was that?

SPEAKER_02 34:35

Who who provided the loans? And who built the debt?

SPEAKER_00 34:43

I'm pretty sure no, I'm just going because I do have it, but I'm off memory, I'm pretty sure it was um an Italian construction company done with Italian banks.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Yeah. Yeah, let me give you another example, and that is so Raphael Correa, president of Ecuador for about 10 years, has a PhD in economics from he had a he really has an MBA from Belgium and a PhD in economics from the United States. I know Raphael quite well, uh, and he's now living in Belgium. We've we've talked on Zoom recently. Um he understands the system. And when he first became president of Ecuador, he he uh appointed a commission to look into whether the Ecuadorians really owed all the debt that the World Bank claimed they owed. And the commission came to the conclusion that they didn't. About $35 billion worth of that debt, I think I've got that number right, uh, a large amount of that debt was was not owed by the people of Ecuador because it had been accepted by military dictators in Ecuador who were put into power essentially by the United States and were very corrupt. And they took on this debt without checking with the people, there was no democracy involved, and so the Commission said, no, the dictators owe the debt, uh, and the World Bank should not have not given this debt because it was used uh for lousy projects and there was a lot of corruption. So the but the people of Ecuador don't owe the money, that's for sure. Maybe John Perkins owes the money, he was an economic given. That's a Korea says that with tongue in cheek, but there's a certain truth to it. Uh but the people of Ecuador don't know it. And so Korea defaulted on the loan. And immediately all the Western uh rating agencies, Fitches and and and uh all the other ones, um, downgraded Ecuador to to trash. Uh Ecuador had no financial standing in the Western world. China stepped in and offered Ecuador a big loan at low interest that Ecuador could pay off. And pretty soon their ratings went back up. And then China gave them another loan. And and Korea, who'd been trained in the United States, had a PhD, he's he turns against the United States and he turns to China. And as a you know, as a consequence, China built a huge hydroelectric dam and power plant in the jungle, in the very fragile rainforest. This dam was supposed to provide power for roughly between a third and a half of the whole country of Ecuador. But they built it on a fault line next to an active volcano, reventador, in the middle of a fragile rainforest. And when they turned on the it had eight generating units, when they turned them on, the whole system, electrical system of Ecuador shorted out. And this cracks now in the generating house, uh, and it's never operated at capacity, you know, anything close to capacity, but Ecuador now owes all this money to China. So China now is going in with its mining companies and mining gold and copper and other minerals deep in the Amazon rainforest and building projects which are very poorly engineered according to the engineers that have looked at them, dams that retaining dams that are holding cyanide and mercury that are are likely to fail, especially if there's an earth earthquake, and dump incredible amounts of toxic chemicals into the rivers that flow into the Amazon and then out into the Atlantic Ocean. Um so, you know, there's there's your typical story of how this whole thing mushrooms. And, you know, you you had a president come in that really wanted to do the right thing. You want to say, My people don't owe this debt. But we slam-dunked him as a result, said, Yeah, you do owe the debt, and you're not paying it, so you're going to be rated poorly. And the Chinese, China sees this as an opportunity, steps in, and then imposes the debt trap. So to me, that's that's a that's a classic example, and it's one that's done by a president who I think was totally sincere and trying to do the best thing for his country, understood global economics. And I wrote in the New Confessions of an Economic Hitman about how I thought Korea did this because he was scared by the attempted coup against him and the coup that succeeded was Zelaya in Honduras, and then he turned around and made changes. Well, he's debated me on this, and he has his own television program which preaches a lot of Latin America, and I've been on it with him, and he, you know, he'll say, you know, John, you know, that's that's not the case. He said, and and this is interesting, Ryan. He he says the fact of the matter is the area that we're talking about where all these minerals and oil exist in the Amazon, and roughly almost half the you know, half the country of Ecuador is extremely unpopulated. It's very, very few people living there. All these in, you know, these indigenous people who are living in this fragile rainforest, but this but from a population standpoint, it's not very much populated. So on the other hand, in the s in the Andes Mountains and along the coast, that's one of the most densely populated places in the Americas. And the people in these densely populated areas, they want better better education, they want better health care, they want better hospitals, they want social services, and they put tremendous pressure on a president or the government of Ecuador to go out and and exploit these resources, which is the only way that we can have enough money to provide better social services. That's the dilemma. And then the United States or China comes along and takes advantage of this of this vulnerable yes, of a tremendous vulnerability.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

That real world example you just gave from the mouth of Korea is uh so fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

Where are you, Ryan? Where are you located? Sweden. Uh you're not that far from Belgium. Closer to Belgium than I am. I would I would strongly recommend that you try to get in touch with Korea. He has his own podcast television show, and I think he'd be happy to talk with you, and I think it'd be a really great inter conversation.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

If you'd put me in touch with him, I would be beyond thrilled to do that, John.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

Um let's when we go off the air, I'll give you the information.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

We haven't spoken I mean at all. Off air, but one of the big projects that I'm working on is with Jim Henry, this author of Blood Bankers. And we're trying to do an updated version. And you know, that Balbina example is pulled straight from there. This example you just gave would be something straight from there. It's for me, it's the most sort of tangible way to understand how pervasive something might be by giving these real world examples and just bringing it home by yeah, pointing out this um yeah, so that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

So so yeah, and and so no, that example is in my new book uh in more detail than the actual numbers, which I don't really know.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Well, yeah, we'll bring them to the next one promoting the China book because I'm thinking about as well the amount of examples along the Chinese Belt and Road, and then as well, sort of the motivation for why they would want this independent trade route in the first place, and then what that says about globalization, international trade. Um, you know, obviously that's why it's such a fascinating topic that you decided to discuss. But I want to um bring up something with you, and it's about the what the global offshore haven, you know, phenomenon, industry, financial secrecy. This is, at least from my you know, shallow understanding, probably the most important variable to all of this functioning and working. Yet there isn't much emphasis on it in Confessions of Economic Hitman. But in books that would be classified in the same genre as you, say Treasure Islands, Nick Shackson, Blood Bankers, Jim Henry, you know, Billion Dollar Whale, uh Kleptocracy, Moneyland, Oliver Bullo, all these great books speaking about the offshore financial industry, um they would be in the same genre as yours, but in your specific book there isn't much mention of it. So I just really want to hear what why that is, but also you know what you make of it.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

Well, it it's not there because I'm I'm a macroeconomist and and and that you know my my idea was convincing countries to take these huge loans and do development economics. I wasn't involved and and and certainly not an any kind of an expert on the on the financial uh side of side of these things. Uh so that was something that I was never involved in. And you know, my books are confessions. I I write about personal things that I can have actually experienced rather than speculate on a lot of other issues. But yeah, I mean that's a big part of it. But it's not just off shore. I mean, we found as through the Panama Papers and some of the other expose that you know, there's the states in the United States where the banking laws are are or even cities where the banking laws are extremely loose and and and allow for these sorts of things to go on also.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

But in your dealings, I mean you're facilitating financing, right? Like you might not necessarily be the financee or the macroeconomist presenting the the great pitch of the value for this localized people over here. But uh presumably there is still some mediating factor that you have to maybe know where the money's coming from or then once you give it to them how they're going to distribute it, you know, how people are paying taxes and all of this, where the offshore haven might be located, just I mean any of that in your in your own experience.

SPEAKER_02 44:40

Yeah no I paid no attention to that. My job was to get the president of a country to accept this huge loan from the World Bank. The money went directly from the World Bank in Washington to Bechtel's bank in San Francisco or Stonewebs's bank in Boston or Halliburton's bank in in Texas and um and and in the process then part of the deal was Mr. President you know if you take on this loan not only are you going to benefit through through the use of electricity but also um we're gonna you you your your brother-in-law has a a sub has a contracting company that builds uh that digs ditches and and lays pipe uh we'll see to it that your brother-in-law's company is hired and we're happy to pay premium prices for his work we're not gonna ask for a discount in other words y you know you can bill he can bill us two million dollars for for something that would normally bill a million dollars and if he wants to give that if half if he wants to give that million dollar windfall half of it to you or all of it to you you you and he can figure that out we don't want anything to do with that we're not bribing anybody we're we're totally legal but we'll but we're but we're happy to pay more than we should because that's not illegal. And your sister has the the John Deere franchise and we're gonna hire you we're gonna rent John Deere equipment and again we'll pay we'll pay double what so these sorts of things go on and and when the president or his brother or his sister whoever gets the money I don't know what they do with it whether they they put it in the bank in the in the c in the in the in the Turks and Caicos or or who what they do with the money put you know what they do with it I don't want to know.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

But when you were say traveling the world um making these deals did you have with you in your team financiers and bankers who did explicitly understand this world? Because I'm trying to marry all of these different books in this genre that I love so much together and understand the whole worldview. Where does Bloodbankers compliment the economic hitman compliment say the offshore accountants in the Caymans?

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Yeah it it well to me it's two separate worlds. And my world was to con to convince these governments to take on these huge loans to hire our companies and then the money when when I did it almost all the money came from what we call the Washington consensus the US Treasury Department the IMF the World Bank the Inter American Development Bank the Asian Development Bank it it it it came through those organizations and you know uh w Wall Street private banks were not typically weren't involved in in what we were doing. So it was a it was a pretty straightforward thing all I had to do was to convince these countries to take these loans and to commit to never extene the money to sign off on the debt but then hiring our companies to use that money to build infrastructure projects.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

So there's undoubtedly a relationship there but it's almost like two two separate two separate worlds um in the book you sort of you have these various sort of moments of crisis you know self-doubt what is the ethics the morale of what I'm doing and you know you've since sort of committed the career to making penance for the immorality of the job that you were doing but I just can't help but project a romanticization onto this lifestyle that you're leading and the sort of interesting work of going to different countries, meeting with the important people, securing deals that theoretically were going to influence the lives of millions of different people. How much do you look back on the days with sort of a romantic view versus is it all sort of shame and disgust it's not all shame and disgust because for the fur I was I was only in the business for ten years.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

And for the first six or seven years in in I believed in what I was doing because I that's what I've been taught in business school. That's why the World Bank had all these reports to convince you that yeah take out these loans build companies GDP grows. It does I could see that I could look at all the statistics from from 25 years earlier and we could project them into the future using very at the time very sophisticated econometric models and see that the country is going to benefit. But it was but but you know I speak Spanish and fluently and and I could talk with the people and Omar Torrijos of Panama one the one that was ultimately died in a plane crash he he explained all this to me. He said John don't can't you see the shadow side of this can't you see the story behind the story that that that that only the rich rich people in these countries really benefit from this and for the most part the everybody else suffers and so then I began to look at it and once I understood the the truth behind the the the the the statistical lies that we were presenting and they're and they're not necessarily lies they're just formulated on a basis that strongly favors big corporations no question about it. And he said and but once I saw that Ryan I didn't want to believe it and I think this is an important story because I think there's a lot of people who you know I was making a really good salary and I grew I grew up with pretty poor son of teachers in a in New Hampshire rural New Hampshire I'd never gone anywhere until you know until they I went to Boston to college.

SPEAKER_00 50:29

And that's the next state that's the next state borders New Hampshire you know and and and suddenly I'm traveling the world I'm flying first class I'm staying in the best hotels and eating in the finest restaurants and winning and dining with with presidents and and and celebrities beautiful women and it's like I don't I don't I don't want to believe I want to believe the lie you know and but as time went on my conscience over the next three three or four years my conscience continually got I you know I began to see more and more and more and then I had one one one moment of deep enlightenment when I knew I had to quit and did and and even now sort of having so many years removed between you operating as an EHM and sitting here now yeah there's still parts of it that you really romanticize well there were parts of it that were very romantic there were women who were very romantic.

SPEAKER_02 51:31

I visited places in you know Indonesia and Egypt and Iran I loved Iran it would it was a very it was there were parts of the lifestyle that were very romantic. Yeah I worked for the Shah basically you know uh and and uh yeah I spent a lot of time in Iran all during the 70s and throughout Latin America and I still go to Latin America on my way there in in in two weeks I'm going into the Amazon rainforest I take groups of people if anybody wants to join me just look at johnperkins.org. I'm gonna ask you about that affair actually I'd love to join you to Guatemala that trip you're doing Guatemala's in December in January and I go to Ecuador again in December these are marvelous trips where we hang out with all the indigenous shamans and teachers and it's it's it's phenomenal. So you know the fact is I did that for 10 years. I ended in 80 81 and I've devoted the rest of my life to trying to turn things around do I feel bad about the things I did? Yes I do it but I also understand that I was naive I didn't I was I was I was being conned myself and I got out and and I feel good about the fact that you know I have a lot of credibility because I went through that experience and I'm invited to speak at huge international economic forums and at corporations which has always surprised me that some of these people I sp I had a gave a major speech at the World Bank a f sever a number of years ago my books are very popular. In the World Bank bookstore they were on a shelf of the ten most popular books in that the World Bank had sold for several years and it was number four. That really struck me as odd.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

And I asked to talk to the manager I said I'm surprised you considering your direct criticism of them as well.

SPEAKER_02 53:19

Yeah I said I'm surprised you didn't sell this book here and he says well we sell whatever our our clients want the people at the World Bank may they want this book. So you know and I hear from so many people about how the the book has enlightened them and and changed their lives which which which helps to counterbalance the the guilt I may feel for the things that I did do that were under those ten years.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

John there's absolutely no doubt that it really challenges and to a degree changes one's sort of worldview when they ever think of economic development whoever would think of economic development in a shallow or or or a deep fashion and I wanted to ask you how what you made of the commercial success of EHM because as it says in your website almost two million copies sold that puts you at the tail end of the tail end of the tail end of book sale distribution. And if you think of all these equivalents that I've also already mentioned in the same genre throughout this conversation they are they probably a little bit above average of book distribution sales but it's in a completely different ball game to how EHM did.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

How do you account for the commercial success particularly and the fact that it's touched so many different people I don't know uh and it's got it's way more than two is it say my website says almost four million like we get one it says one point seven we get oh it's way over two million wow really are you prepared to say how many yeah I don't know I I I the last I knew it was like two two two point two million or something like that but I really that puts you at the you know top 0.001% of books of all time sales yeah in in 38 languages um you know and it's uh 37 languages and and 73 the the opposite uh weeks on the New York Times bestseller list I think um you know I don't know it it it caught on very very quickly I was on uh I first let me say that the that the that the manuscript was rejected by 39 publishers for real I got 39 rejection slips I'll tell you if there's any budding authors or anything anybody out there that's struggling with rejection just keep trying and what you gotta tell yourself is don't take it personally it's not personal that that editor rejected me but I mean I had to create the story for myself I get a rejection slip from Penguin I'd have to say well that editor she she had a a fight with her husband at breakfast and just threw everything into the rejection file because she was pissed off or this editor well he he had flu when he came into the office and he just you know and and just keep going and then the 40th uh took it and and and almost immediately after it was published it went to the New York Times bestseller list and I was on one show uh the first uh sometime within the first couple of weeks after it was out Amy Goodman uh Democracy Now and in the morning and for ten minutes I was on her show and that that afternoon the book went to n to one to the top ten in Amazon and then it went to the New York Times and it just kept going.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

Oh yeah it's almost it's almost like a stroke of serendipitous fortune that you sort of get on the hamster wheel the domino.

SPEAKER_02 56:35

And I think you know I had a s another book The Secret History of the American Empire that was on the New York Times bestseller list very for very briefly but it just you know it wasn't a fun I think Confessions is a fun read. It's an entertaining read 100% it's a page I picked it up and I read the whole thing in 24 hours and and the the and the next one which was Secret History of the American Empire published by Penguin uh you know they gave me a really good contract now I didn't have to go out trying to sell a book they ever come into me and uh it uh you know it it it just wasn't as much fun to read. It it had some really good information in it but it's not as much fun to read. So I think the combined aspects of the this what the facts that were presented or the information that was presented uh and the story behind them that like you said reads like a almost like a spy novel and it's all it's all totally true but it's it's uh you know and you know I mean as a writer you don't you you may you want to make the exciting parts ring you know I don't I don't I don't mention all the incredible number of hours I spent writing reports. I mean yeah you know I don't I don't devote a hundred pages to all the reports that would be very boring. And so you know it's you you do I do emphasize the things that I think will make it a page turner and I think that seems to have worked but again all the things that are in there as page turners were also in there because I thought they would help present the the points that I wanted to make.

SPEAKER_00 58:07

Is it a hard exit for you in a minute or two?

SPEAKER_02 58:11

I I'm just I I just got a text that I can I I did a little exchange that I can delay another 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

Perfect okay perfect um in that case uh I just love to hear briefly if possible maybe you can wait till the next one where we talk about China but the modern equivalent of say Charles T Maine of the economic hitmen are they still you know tightly buttoned chief economists of consultancy firms or is it a whole different breed of people in different areas entirely?

SPEAKER_02 58:43

So the new confessions of an economic hitman which was published twelve years after the original in 2016 I talk about this new breed so we've still got the people that did what I did which is kind of generic you know we just wanted to bring resources and and and and and riches and profits into American corporations and really I didn't care whether Bechtel or Halliburton got the construction job as long as my company got got some of the you know the consulting work as long as we get a pretty good share of the consulting that's all we were interested in I didn't care as long as some American company got it. And w that still goes on. But in addition now every major international company has the economic hitmen uh whether it's Walmart or or Amazon or Google or you name it any international company has its economic hitmen that are just pushing for that company. So you know a classic case is is uh uh Amazon in the United States had sent their economic hitmen to to to to pit various cities against each other for Amazon said we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna build a new facility this who's gonna get it and New York ultimately got it and because they offered all these tax breaks and and and so on and so forth and then the new people of New York said no we don't want it and so it was transferred to I think Atlanta. But whenever a company's gonna build a new big pl plant an industry that's just one one of many examples or open a huge new uh uh marketing effort they'll go to Sri Lanka they'll go to uh Indonesia and uh the Philippines and they'll the economic hitmen go in and they say hey we're gonna employ a lot of your people but you're gonna give us a really good deal tax breaks no environmental laws you know and so on and so forth and many of these mod these new economic hitmen these are people who were senators in the US government in the US uh Senate or representatives in the U.S. Congress who who didn't get re-elected or decide they didn't want to keep running and so they go in as lobbyists or consultants, advisors. They don't call themselves economic hitmen, but their job is to promote that company and to do everything they can to get the lowest tax rates, the the lowest the least regulations environmentally and socially and on and on and on. So it's gotten much bigger it's become a bigger business the economic hitman business. But they don't call themselves economic hitman they are.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:14

Yeah I mean implied in the word hitman is that it's always malicious. I wanted to ask you if there was any chance that within the economic hitman worldview there is genuine upside to be had in certain circumstances and perhaps it's a survivorship bias of the bad examples that rise to the top that that's what you refer to. But if you give the example of say Amazon going to Atlanta because they got a bunch of tax breaks I mean I could easily sit on the other side of the of that argument and say that's a net benefit to Atlanta.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:48

So is it necessarily that they're always malicious I think they're always driven by a goal of maximizing short-term profits. And I think ultimately that's malicious for all of us that that's the death economy. The death economy is about maximizing short-term profits something that Milton Sriedman who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976 uh promoted very strongly and it's it's it's a terrible it's a terrible goal maximizing short-term profits regardless of the social and environmental costs so I think all of these things we're talking about are promoted by that whatever economic hitmen do in in in in this westernized version of capitalism is malicious in that it's creating a world uh that's destroying itself basically it's creating a human sp a human philosophy that's destroying the world that's that's probably a better way to put it the world as we know it. Um so while it may not seem malicious on a on a short term basis for the people of Atlanta ultimately it is creating havoc because it's s something this something's giving something that company is getting benefits it shouldn't be getting it's using huge amounts of of uh public funds uh fire department police department transportation systems the airport and so on and yet it's being told it doesn't have to pay taxes to to cover to cover those things.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

Yeah it consumes a ridiculous amount of public utility three writing given the economic talk. Exactly uh John we've we've coming towards the end of the time so I want to ask you one more but before I ask it I just want to say this so I get a chance before the time runs out but many years ago uh I think in 2014 I first read Confessions of an Economic Hitman and I barely read any books at all you know in my life and probably a handful of books that I would read and and I loved it and I just thought it was fascinating and it really changed my worldview quite a lot. But then um you know I did nothing with that for many years and then started this podcast in 2020 and became really really really interested mostly in financial secrecy and how that is really a cancer upon the world and that introduced me to so many other authors including Jim Henry who that serendipitous interaction has really also um been a huge influence on my life because now we're working together and going towards certain ways and it all sort of started with the gem of the economic hitman the entertainment of it the fascination of it so I just want to say I it's a it's a very influential book to me and and I and I like it a lot and um I think I can make the argument for why it was such a good commercial success versus these other ones. I think you humbly say you don't know. But at the end of the day it's because it's a bloody good story that's really well told and so cheers John I was quite nervous before we did this podcast and I genuinely we've gone through five percent of the po of the questions that I wanted to ask so hopefully there's another chance in the future to do more. But nonetheless I just want to say all that and then leave you with this final question. Can you describe a moment in your life that looking back on it you just you can't believe you were there. You can't believe you're a part of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:06

Well certainly you know it that the Saudi Arabia money laundering affair was was a big one and I often look back at that and say what did we you know what did how did we sell our souls at that point? I mean the United States really really cut a cut a d a devil's deal and in in a certain way that Saudi Arabia cut a devil's deal too and I look back on that and say how did I ever you know how did how did I ever get involved in that and in the book I talk about how I actually had to pimp for one of the Saudi princes who who who got to vote on this deal. They the whole Saudi family had to basically agree on the deal and one who lived in Boston uh uh required that he you know he he he basically required that I set him up with a beautiful blonde woman and it couldn't be a prostitute, it had to be someone with sophistication and I ended up doing that and and having to cover it out of my expense account. It was just crazy, crazy, crazy. That's in the book. Crazy stuff. Uh another uh a moment that was particularly important to me was uh Omar Torrijos invited me out one time on a yacht. He didn't own yachts or anything, but he had friends that did. And we go out on this yacht and we're out there with surrounded by lovely ladies and small bikinis and we're drinking uh uh you know we're drinking uh I don't know, uh margaritas or something. And and and Omar says to me, he says, John, don't you realize what you're doing? Don't you realize that all the lies that you're selling? You know, you when you when you d when you d when you try to get me and my country to accept these huge loans, you're trying you're trying to get us to to become slaves to you. And we're already slaves to some degree that Panama is the United States, but you're trying to dig us in deeper. Don't you realize that? And and he would he went on and explained to me. He was one of the first to really explain to me. And then he said to me, he said, Why don't you come and work for me? He said, you know, you'd have a really good life. He points around the yacht. And he says, You wouldn't make nearly as much money as you're making now, but you'd really enjoy yourself and you'd feel good about what you're doing. You'd feel really good about we want to set an example for the world that we don't have to give in to the United States. We don't have to be a puppet any longer. It was a very enlightening moment, and then, you know, more time spent with him where he really helped me understand how GDP was not a decent was not a measure of of prosperity for a country. It was only a measure of how well the wealthy are doing. Yeah, and you know, there were tremendous it was an enlightening moment when I quit being an economic hitman and so on and so forth. But yeah, I think we do need to have more conversations, Ryan. I've enjoyed this, and uh um I'm headed for the Amazon uh uh for about three weeks, uh in in a week in about a week, a little over a week. Um But it'd be good to maybe talk about the time the new book is coming out about China. I'd love to get into that in more detail because I've I've spent a lot of time thinking about that. I taught at an MBA program in China and Shanghai, and it was very it was a very enlightening experience for me, a very interesting experience.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:19

Absolutely, John. That'd be unreal.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:23

I love what you're doing. You're doing great work, and the fact that you're exposing all of this is is is wonderful. And thank you for the plug for the book. I'm so grateful that it had such an impact on you. I like to hear things like that. It's nice always to hear it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:38

Thank you so much, John, Mr. Perkins. Um, a thrill. Sorry for rushing through it. Uh but like uh but yes, hopefully we get more chances uh to speak publicly.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:49

And you know, I'd like to close by saying I think all your listeners can can tell can understand that you listen you we're all living in the most blessed times possible. We are at a cusp, we are at a turning point in what it means to be human. We may not make the turn, I'm not sure we're going to, but we have the opportunity truly to move from what I describe in the books as a death economy to a life economy. We are at this very, very critical time in human history, and we should all be grateful to be part of this. You know, I mean we can participate in a consciousness revolution that can really turn things around. And that's exciting. It's very exciting.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:30

Amazing. Mr. Perkins. See ya.