An economic hit man reveals why the
world financial markets imploded, and what we need to do to remake them
Broadway Business -- John Perkins has seen the signs of today's economic
meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiascos, the banking industry
collapse, the rising tide of unemployment, the shuttering of small
businesses across the landscape are all too familiar symptoms of a far
greater disease. In his former life as an economic hit man, he was on the
front lines both as an observer and a perpetrator of events, once confined
only to the third world, that have now sent the United States - and in fact
the entire planet - spiraling toward disaster.
Here, Perkins pulls back the curtain on the real cause of the current global
financial meltdown. He shows how we've been hoodwinked by the CEOs who run
the corporatocracy - those few corporations that control the vast amounts of
capital, land, and resources around the globe - and the politicians they
manipulate. These corporate fat cats, Perkins explains, have sold us all on
what he calls predatory capitalism, a misguided form of geopolitics and
capitalism that encourages a widespread exploitation of the many to benefit
a small number of the already very wealthy. Their arrogance, gluttony, and
mismanagement have brought us to this perilous edge. The solution is not a
"return to normal."
Graham Hancock, "Lords of
Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business,"
Atlantic Monthly Press; Reprint edition (January 10, 1994)
Smedley Darlington Butler, "'War Is a
Racket'," The Wisdom Fund, September 11, 2001
[Spouting ostensible free market ideology, the pro-creditor mainstream
rejects what the classical economic reformers actually wrote. One is left to choose
between central planning by a public bureaucracy, or even more centralized planning by
Wall Street's financial bureaucracy. The middle ground of a mixed public/private economy
has been all but forgotten, denounced as "socialism." Yet every successful economy in
history has been a mixed economy.--Michael Hudson, "Bubbles Always Burst," counterpunch.org, September
28, 2015]
[capitalism is successful primarily because it can impose the majority of the costs
associated with its economic activities on outside parties and on the environment.--Paul
Craig Roberts, "The
Looting Machine Called Capitalism," counterpunch.org, April 26, 2017]