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We spend the hour with John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies.

Perkins writes, „The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits–Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.

John Perkins goes on to write: „I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop.”

JOHN PERKINS: Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan—let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador—and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure—a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, „Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It’s an empire. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It’s been extremely successful.

AMY GOODMAN: How closely did you work with the World Bank?

JOHN PERKINS: Very, very closely with the World Bank. The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we’re going to feel secure in this country again and that we’re going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we’ve put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that. I believe the World Bank and other institutions can be turned around and do what they were originally intended to do, which is help reconstruct devastated parts of the world. Help—genuinely help poor people. There are twenty-four thousand people starving to death every day. We can change that.

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/9/confessions_of_an_economic_hit_man

és

http://www.democracynow.org/features/confessions_of_an_economic_hitman

A tanmesék mindig egyszerűsítenek, hogy közérthetőek legyenek. És persze a kapitalizmus maga a probléma. De van egy alapvetően fontos gondolat a „tanmese” végén:
„Úgy gondolom, hogy nagyon fontos megértenünk, hogy addig nem lehet biztonságban a hazánk, míg meg nem értjük, hogy az egész bolygó a hazánk.”

a kapitalizmus jelenlegi formájának (nevezzük: mutánsnak, akárminek!) már semmi köze a korai vállalkozói kapitalizmushoz, ahol a (termékeire) büszke tulajdonos igyekezett a fogyasztók kedvében járni!
a jelenlegi kapitalizmust csak a profit érdekli, és ilyenformán (ön)pusztító!

Szerintem nem helyes dolog most az IMF ellen uszítani, hiszen ez olyan feltételezésekre ad alkalmat, melyek szerint az indymedia és a körülötte működő „alternatív” körök a fidesz csődpolitikáját támogatják. Így is elégszer kerültetek már a jobboldaliság gyanújába, nem kellene tovább rontani a helyzetet.

Szerintem igenis a kapitalizmus a hibás, és egyben a probléma gyökere. Elég nehéz azonban megszüntetni. Ha valakinek van ötlete, szóljon, mert a világforradalom még nem jött össze, és a főszervezők is pihennek (Lenin és Trockij). Nehéz harcolni az olyan eszmék/gyakorlatok ellen, amelyek emberöltők, évszázadok óta léteznek és ezért természetesnek vesszük őket (pl. tőke-bérmunka, Isten, bűnös homoszexualitás, háborúk stb.). Akkor el is mondom: Lehetne máshogy is.