Reversing Economic Hit Man Strategies that Threaten All Life
Jamie Dimon, CEO of Chase / American EHM
By John Perkins
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition: China’s EHM Strategy; Ways to Stop the Global Takeover emphasizes the need to end the EHM strategy that is destroying life on our planet – regardless of whether that strategy is implemented by the US or China. The book points out the dark side of the recent US strategy:
Following 9/11, the new EHM wave had become ubiquitous in America; EHMs strolled from the corridors of the White House, through the US Congress, along Wall Street, and into the boardrooms of every major company. Corruption at the top had become legitimized because corporate EHMs drafted the laws, and the politicians they financed passed them. Loyalty was to specific corporations rather than the US.
A recent article in the Guardian makes a strong connection between climate change and America’s EHMs, zeroing in on one EHM in particular:
US banks have released a spate of climate promises, committing to achieve net zero by 2050 and reduce emissions by 2030. But the hard truth remains: Wall Street’s financing of coal, oil and gas was higher in 2021 than it was in 2016, the year after the Paris agreement was adopted. Last year alone, US banks provided $64bn in financing to the corporations most rapidly expanding their coal, oil and gas operations. . .
After Putin launched his war on Ukraine, the CEO of Chase, Jamie Dimon, joined the CEOs of ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to directly lobby President Biden to increase domestic fossil fuel production. A month later, Dimon used his influential annual letter to shareholders to further lobby on behalf of his oil and gas clients. “We also need immediate approval for additional oil leases and gas pipelines,” he wrote, despite the fact that newly approved oil and gas projects won’t come online for years and won’t help solve the current energy crisis. (1)
Confessions, 3rd Edition describes three waves of EHMs. The first wave began when I was getting started as an economic hit man in the 1970s. We focused on exploiting lower-income countries that had resources our corporations coveted, like oil. We convinced these countries to accept huge loans from the World Bank or one of his sister organizations and use the money to hire US companies to develop infrastructure projects in the countries. In the end, the countries could not repay the debt; so we demanded payment by allowing US companies to exploit their resources, without environmental or social regulations. The second wave took off after 9/11. These EHMs expanded their activities to include the exploitation of people and institutions in the US and other higher-income countries. People from all walks of life were caught in the “debt trap” of skyrocketing student loans, constantly increasing medical debt, predatory payday loans, and tax laws that subsidize the rich at everyone else’s expense. This second EHM wave included former members of Congress, government officials, and corporate executives like Chase’s CEO. They adopted fancy titles, such as President, lobbyist, consultant, and advisor. Besides the debt trap, one of their other specialties was passing laws that gave their corporations special subsidies, grants, and tax breaks. From Confessions, 3rd Edition:
My research took me to Good Jobs First, a national policy center. . .According to its reports, over the course of fifteen years, the federal government had distributed $68 billion in grants and special tax credits to businesses. Two-thirds of that was transferred to large corporations.
Major companies identified by Good Jobs First whose lobbyists were most successful at obtaining subsidies included Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors, JPMorgan Chase, Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, United Technologies, Goldman Sachs, and almost half of the one hundred most profitable federal contractors. All told, a shocking 298 corporations each received subsidies of $60 million or more. (2) These companies reaped benefits from ports, airports, highways, utilities, schools, fire departments, and other services, and made billions of dollars in profits, yet they did not pay their fair share toward supporting the institutions that served them and their employees.
An investigation by the Guardian revealed that coal, oil, and gas industries benefited from subsidies of $550 billion, four times the amounts provided to renewable energy. (3) This second EHM wave was highly successful at ripping off the American tax-payer.
The third wave began when Xi Jinping became China’s president in 2013. China’s EHMs learned from the success and failures of the first and second waves. From Confessions, 3rd Edition:
In less than a decade, China’s global takeover became so broad and successful that today it is the largest trading partner with countries on every continent. It has beaten out the United States in energy, transportation, communications, and other infrastructure development around the world.
Whatever one thinks of China, whatever its real intent, and despite recent setbacks, it is impossible not to recognize that China’s domestic successes and its modifications to the EHM strategy impress much of the world.
I discuss these three waves in more detail and give many examples in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition. The only logical conclusion is that the EHM strategy must end; the US, China, and the rest of the world must understand that we can disagree on many issues, but we simply have to unite in an effort to end climate change and the terrible degenerative death economy that threatens the future for all life.
You and I – every one of us – has a role to play.
To read the incredible stories behind these three EHM waves and discover the role you can play to transform the death economy into a regenerative life economy orderConfessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition. By pre-ordering now, you can join for free a 90-minute virtual program with me. I will discuss attempts that were made to block the publication of my books and to poison me, and I will describe the challenges I faced writing about China’s EHMs. The programs will include time for questions and discussions; recordings will be available.