Episode 315 – Confessions of an Economic Hitman: A Conversation with John Perkins
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John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, once helped create a “death economy.” Now he believes humanity desperately needs a “life economy” to reverse the cycle.
John Perkins is a storyteller. His stories tell of his work as an economic hit man, creator of a death economy that is polluting and consuming itself into extinction. He has served as advisor to the World Bank, UN, IMF, Fortune 500 corporations, and government and business leaders across the globe.
“You know, my job was pretty easy, generally speaking, because I was offering the president of a country or his finance minister, whoever, a big loan. And the fact that this loan would help him and his family, his friends – they owned the businesses in most cases – they were the ones who benefited from big infrastructure”
“They knew that if they didn’t accept this deal, the people we call the jackals would come in and they would either overthrow or assassinate the President, whoever was responsible. And, you know, the United States has admitted to this over and over. Allende in Chile, Mossadegh in Iran, Lumumba in the Congo. My two clients. We haven’t admitted to that one yet, but we have admitted to Diem in Vietnam and more recently [Manuel] Zelaya in Honduras. We’ve admitted to these things.”
For seven out of his ten years as an economic hit man, John believed what he was taught in business school: to help a poor country pull itself out of poverty, you invest heavily in infrastructure. Statistically this can be shown to increase the country’s economy – its GDP and GDP per capita. Per capita implies that everybody in the country is participating, but that’s just not true. “GDP primarily measures how well the wealthy are doing and the big corporations.”
John’s insights are not merely theoretical; they are rooted in personal experience. In other episodes of this podcast, we’ve talked about cycles of debt that sink global South nations into dire poverty. In this conversation, John recounts the manipulative tactics for securing lucrative contracts for US corporations across the globe, thus creating these debt traps.
To repair the damage, John urges a radical shift towards a ‘life economy’—one that focuses on sustainability, equity, and regeneration.
John Perkins served as Chief Economist at a major consulting firm and was advisor to the World Bank, UN, IMF, Fortune 500 corporations, and government and business leaders in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States. Before that, he apprenticed with shamans when he lived in the Amazon rainforest from 1968 to 1971 and has since studied with shamans from many different cultures. His eleven books on economics, shamanism, and transformation include the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man trilogy; Shapeshifting; The World Is as You Dream It; and Touching the Jaguar. They have been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 70 weeks, sold millions of copies, and are published in at least 38 languages.
https://johnperkins.org/
Steve Grumbine
All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today’s guest is a hero of mine.
It’s somebody who, when I was just starting my journey of trying to understand the world around me and understand economics and macroeconomics and geopolitics, his book, and I don’t want to lose the plot here, but his book Confessions of an Economic Hitman really, really set me on my path and brought me through to the other end, where we are today with this podcast, quite frankly, starting before I understood modern monetary theory. It is singularly the biggest eye-opening book I believe I’ve ever read in my life. So let me introduce my guest, John Perkins, economist, author, activist. As chief economist at a major consulting firm, John was advisor to the World Bank, UN, Fortune 500 corporations, and many governments.
His 11 books, including the Confessions of an Economic Hitman trilogy, spent more than 70 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, sold millions of copies, are published in 38 languages.
He has lectured at more than 50 universities, been featured on ABC, NBC, CNN, Time, New York Times, Elle, Der Spiegel and others, as well as in many films. He is founder of the nonprofits Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance, and winner of the Lenin Ono Peace Prize.
Without further ado, let me bring on my guest, John Perkins. Welcome to the show, sir.
John Perkins
Thank you. It’s great to be with you.
Steve Grumbine
I got to tell you, the stories that you told in both the original Confessions and the New Confessions are absolutely jaw dropping. And for those who haven’t read these books, I want you to read these books.
But I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your story and give us an intro to what is an economic hitman.
John Perkins
Well, yeah, I think it’s fair to say that we economic hitmen have created what we refer to as a death economy, an economic system that is polluting and consuming itself into extinction. And we’ve done this in a very efficient way, frankly.
And we all know that we’ve got climate change, we’ve got income inequality, we’ve got species extinctions, and it’s not worth it. You know, we’ve got to change. We’ve got to create what economists are calling a life economy, an economic system that regenerates destroyed environments, pays people to clean up pollution, to recycle, and you know, to create new technologies that can produce energy out of the air, out of water, et cetera, et cetera.
And the way that I participated in all of this, my actual title as chief economist at a major U.S. consulting firm.
But I and my staff would identify countries with resources our corporations covet, like oil, for example, and then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations. But the money would never go to the country.Instead, it would go to our own corporations, usually big construction engineering companies, to build infrastructure projects in that country. Things like electric power grids, industrial parks, highways, ports, airports.
And these would benefit, of course, the corporations that built them, which have made incredible profits.
And also, the wealthy families in the country who are usually the families that control the country, and they own the industries, they own the businesses, they own the banks, they’re the ones that benefited from all this infrastructure.
And less than ultra rich people, the middle class, the lower middle class, the poorer people would actually suffer because money was diverted from education, healthcare and other social services to pay the interest on the debt. In the end, the principal couldn’t be repaid.
And so, we go back to the country and say, hey, since you can’t pay your debts, give us the collateral, your resources, your oil or whatever the resource is, and allow us to build a military base on your soil. Vote with us on the next United Nations vote against Cuba or China or whatever.
And so really in this way, we were establishing a global corporate empire.
It’s not really an American empire, it’s a corporate empire that’s very much supported and led by the US and we were also promoting this death economy, an economic system that’s based on maximizing short term profits and maximizing materialistic consumption and that is taking us to disaster.
Steve Grumbine
Well, you know, I look at your book and believe me, it’s fascinating, but I go back to some of the beginning things that you did. You were, you didn’t know what you were getting into, did you? I mean, when you first started, you had no idea, right?
John Perkins
Right. Well, I graduated.
You know, I went to business school and business school, as I’m sure you know, and the World Bank and these other organizations teach us that if you want to help a poor country pull itself out of poverty, you invest heavily in infrastructure like what we did. And statistically we can show that that increases the economy of the country defined as gross domestic product and gross domestic product per capita.
And that per capita implies that everybody in the country is participating. The fact of the matter is that’s just not true. GDP [Gross Domestic Product] primarily measures how well the wealthy are doing in the big corporations.
A lot of people never even make it to the statistics. People that do most of their trading in local farmers markets and et cetera, et cetera.
So, for about seven out of my ten years as an economic hitman, chief economist, I believed that that was the case. So, I thought I was doing the right thing.
And it wasn’t until I got myself deeply into this that I began to understand how misleading these statistics are.
Steve Grumbine
You know, I look around at regular people, people that don’t have an economic background, and they open up the newspaper and they read these things that sound like the US is this benevolent group of people that are trying to bail out the Global South. And when I talk to people from the Global South, they don’t feel like they’re being uplifted.
In fact, you go into great detail in your book about the coups that were led. You had, I think it was a three-tier system where it was. You guys would go in, then the jackals would go in, which were the CIA ops.
And then if they didn’t get them to take these sweetheart deals, then the US military would come in there and there’d be a coup and there’d be new western friendly puppets placed into power. Talk to me a little bit about that. We all think it, we hear it, but the news never tells it that way.
It always comes out that we’re smelling like a rose, that we’re just doing God’s work here.
John Perkins
Yeah, well, you know, my job was pretty easy, generally speaking, because I was offering the president of a country or his finance minister, whoever, a big loan. And the fact that this loan would help him and his family, his friends, they owned the businesses in most cases, they were the ones who benefited from big infrastructure.
And they knew that if they didn’t accept this deal, the people we call the jackals would come in and they would either overthrow or assassinate the President, whoever was responsible. And, you know, the United States has admitted to this over and over – Allende in Chile, Mossadegh in Iran, Lumumba in the Congo.
My two clients, we haven’t admitted to that one yet, but we have admitted to Diem in Vietnam and more recently [Manuel] Zelaya in Honduras. We’ve admitted to these things. And you know, [yeah], it’s always done in the guise of these are. These are communists.
These presidents, you know, are dangerous to the United States. They are part of The Soviet network, or now, I suppose it’s the Chinese network, as we’re hearing about Panama now.
So, there’s this huge propaganda campaign, and it’s happening today with the Panama Canal.
There’s this huge propaganda campaign that our country is at risk if these people stay in power or if the Chinese continue to operate a couple of ports at the ends of the Panama Canal. So, we get this propaganda campaign.
So, by the time the jackals go in and either overthrow or assassinate leaders, we’re well prepared to believe that they’re doing the right thing.
And if that doesn’t succeed, as what happened in Panama with Noriega, who was a horrible guy, incidentally, but the fact of the matter is we sent them military and we killed thousands of civilians, innocent civilians in Panama, just to take out this one guy. And I know there were ulterior motives for that. It wasn’t just about taking on Noriega because he wasn’t actually taken in the invasion.
It didn’t happen till more than a week later that he was finally captured in the Catholic Archdiocese of Panama. But the American people get fed a pack of lies, basically propaganda. And in the case, in some cases, you know, there’s a basis for some of these.
For example, Noriega was a bad guy, you know, but to go in and firebomb a huge section of Panama City was totally unjustified. There were other motivations for that that we never learned about.
Steve Grumbine
When I was reading your book, one of the other things that jumped out at me, and it’s only because I’ve never actually been to some of these places. I have been to China, but I’ve never been to the Global South other than quick weekend in Mexico.
But reading the extreme poverty on one side of the street while simultaneously US operations are living like paradise on the other side of the street, I mean, this huge disparity of wealth has only shot up since the 70s. A lot of the work you did was early in the 70s and through the 70s.
I’m curious, what was your take on income inequality in light of what you’re seeing today?
John Perkins
Well, I think overall things have gotten worse. And of course, people will dispute that. They’ll say, well, more people have electricity in the world today, which is true.
More people have potable water. But having electricity or potable water doesn’t do you much good if your environment’s being destroyed around you.
Your kids are growing under horrible conditions, and what good does it do to be able to have a cell phone when your conditions are so horrible? So, there’s so many different measurements to this.
And, you know, statistics is a game where you basically reach a conclusion and then you use statistics to justify it. So, I can throw around statistics like, yeah, maybe fewer people live on less than $100 a day today, far fewer than back in the 70s.
But more live on less than $6 a day. And $6 a day doesn’t buy as much as $1 a day did then.
So, there’s all these games that are played with numbers and statistics, as I’m sure you well know with your background.
And I think one of the most difficult things to accept and why I think we’re in a much more dangerous situation today, is that we really have embraced this, the death economy. The world has accepted it, and now China is really taking over. You know, my most recent book, the Economic Hitman series, is a trilogy.
And the most recent one, which came out a little over a year ago, is on China’s economic hitman, who just done a much more efficient job than we did. And so you get the same thing going on. And what we’re doing is creating an economic system that’s destroying our planet as we know it.
And it can’t continue. You know, there’s just no question.
We cannot continue ravaging the resources at the level that we’ve been doing it and polluting the planet, the land, the water and the air on the level that we’ve been doing it. It makes no sense. And so I think overall, I would say that we’re in a worse situation today than we were when I was an economic hit man.
Steve Grumbine
Let me ask you an off question here. You know, obviously you were one person, but there were many more of you, I would imagine. Why have none of them come out and spoken out on this?
Or am I not giving them their due? Have others stepped up and spoken out?
John Perkins
Oh, yeah, a lot of spoken out. But none of them have done it quite the way I did, by writing a book that tells stories. You know, my books are written kind of like novels.
They’re not novels, they’re nonfiction. But I do create conversations.
At the beginning of the book, I make it clear that I can’t remember word for word the conversations that I have had with people like the president of Ecuador, Jaime Roldos, or head of state of Panama, or Montrejos. I say I probably didn’t get the exact words. Like, for one thing, we were speaking Spanish and this is translated into English.
But I do get the content right and the feelings behind it. But, you know, this book has sold millions of copies in 38 languages.
And Joseph Stiglitz, who’s chief economist at the World Bank and won the Nobel Prize in economics, says many of the same things, but he says it in a very academic way. He writes essays, essentially. Books that become essays and. Or essays that become books.
Steve Grumbine
Right.
John Perkins
Nobody really reads those except students of economics. You know, he’s highly respected… not suggesting he isn’t.
But the general public doesn’t buy books like that, so there’s many other people who have written books.
Good friend of mine who is a former head of … high up in AID [US Agency for International Development] in Asia, and then a teacher at Harvard Business School, David Korten, has written very, very similar things. They just don’t reach as wide a group of people and as diverse a group of people as my books do.
Steve Grumbine
Right, I know, absolutely. I can appreciate that.
People never get the cred that they deserve, and it’s probably intentional because they don’t want this to get out, or at least they don’t want it to be well known by people. I think you’ve done a great job of reaching a critical mass. I mean, just the touring you’ve done and talking to people you’ve done.
And there’s no one that I talk to that hasn’t at least heard of your book. Even older, younger, it doesn’t matter. It hits all generations. I think it’s pretty amazing.
John Perkins
I can’t begin to tell you how funny it is sometimes because nobody really recognizes my name and they do recognize “economic hit man.”
And, you know, time after time after time, I’m meeting people at a dinner or cocktail party right on the street or wherever, and I introduce myself and we’re talking and talking, and then somebody maybe brings up, or somehow it comes up that I wrote Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Oh, my God, you’re the guy who wrote that book. And a lot of them say, ah, I’ve heard so much about that book. I never read it, but I heard about it.
Of course, others have read it, but they don’t know who I am, which is great, you know, but they know the concept. So, yeah, you know, I’m a storyteller. I love to tell stories. I do have training as an economist.
I did go through all those experiences, but I realized that that stories are what drive people. It isn’t statistics. If you can combine stories with statistics, that’s the most powerful thing.
But when you just write about the statistics, as some of the other people who had jobs like mine, like some of the people I mentioned, they really focus on the Statistics on, you know, the macroeconomics of the whole thing, or maybe even the microeconomics. But I include all that I write as a story because that’s what I love to do. I love to write. I love to write.
And I was originally an English major, and I think that’s what makes the difference.
Steve Grumbine
Yeah, you know, the why, the how, what’s your reason is very important to me. I know that, like, as an activist, I don’t earn any big money from doing this.
This is a labor of love, for sure, or a labor of necessity in my mind, even if it doesn’t have the blast radius I would like it to have. But storytelling is extremely important. I’m curious, what do you think would be the most compelling story? One of the most.
You’ve got a million of them, but tell us one of a good story from this that people might be able to hang their hat on.
John Perkins
You mean story from my book?
Steve Grumbine
Oh, yeah. Story from your book, story from your life, whatever. I’m very interested in people grabbing onto this.
I don’t want them to just think of it as, this is macroeconomics.
I want them to think in terms of a story that maybe they can relate to and turn this stuff from, you know, boring black and white paper to colorful so that it matters to them, it sticks with them, and they do something with it.
John Perkins
Okay, so here’s one.
One of my clients is the head of state of Panama, Omar Torrijos, who negotiated the Panama Canal treaty with Jimmy Carter, who is right now undoubtedly rolling over in his grave because of the new conversations around taking back the canal. But he was a very, very charismatic leader. People loved him. He was extremely popular in Panama. He was a party animal.
In addition to being a very good president or head of state, he loved to party. He loved his cigars and his rum and having beautiful women around him and so on and so forth.
And I was sent down to Panama to convince him to back off on the canal issue and because it was more important than just the canal, even though that in itself was important. But Torrijos was the president of the head of state of a small country.
And he was looked at around the world as a David standing up to Goliath, the United States. So, he inspired other leaders in other countries to realize that they, too, could stand up to the United States.
So he had to go or he had to be brought down in some way. And so my job was to convince him to give up to basically say, as the most famous boxer from Panama said, “no mas. No mas. No more, no more. I gotta quit.” And he was not going to do that. He had tremendous integrity. And one time he started telling me about the truth of what was going on.
He said, John, you know, it’s time that you learned that you’re lying to yourself and you’re lying to everybody you deal with when you talk about GDP per capita, et cetera, et cetera. And he went through this process with me. And then at one point, we’re on this yacht out in the ocean, and it wasn’t his yacht.
He was not a wealthy guy at all. He never, never wanted to accumulate wealth. He wanted to help his people. But somebody had lent him this yacht for the afternoon.
He and I are on this yacht with some of his staff members, and we’re surrounded by beautiful young women in bikinis, drinking, you know, margaritas or rum and Cokes or something and smoking cigars. And he says to me, and I’m going to tell this like a story now. So he says, so,
And I said, well, “Omar, are you suggesting that I could make a living, I could come to work for you? How much would you pay me?”
And he said, “well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it, John? That’s what you’re always looking for. That’s what the world’s looking for, is money. I wouldn’t pay you nearly as much as what you’re making now.”
And he waves his hands around this yacht with all these beautiful women and the cigars and the drinks. And he says, “But you’d have a lot more fun and you’d feel really, really good about what you were doing to make the world a better place.”
And, you know, I think that it sums up Torrijos and others, and to have integrity, that it isn’t about making money, it isn’t about personal aggrandizement, and it’s about taking risks to do the right thing. And Omar, not long after that, died in his private plane crash.
That was extremely suspicious, that most of Latin America and I believe was an assassination. There’s never been a smoking gun produced.
If you want to kill somebody, private plane is a great way to do it, because the smoking gun goes up with the smoke, the fire. But it was a moment in my life that had a tremendous impact on me.
The way he said it and the facts that he was presenting that were so contrary to the facts that I had been presenting for many years.
Steve Grumbine
What. What an awakening, man. I mean, did that change you, do you think? Did that experience change you?
John Perkins
Absolutely. You know, I, I’d been in an economic hitman about seven years at that time, and I’d been hearing other people say similar type of things, but the way Omar did it and the, the fact that the position he was coming from and. And the knowledge that he had had a huge impact, and. And then I.
I have to tell you, it was very, very difficult for me to get out. I wanted to, but, you know, people put a lot of pressure on me and to stay in, including threats and so forth.
And also, I come from a relatively poor teacher’s family in rural New Hampshire. I’d never been outside New England, you know, until I joined the Peace Corps after graduating from school.
And now I’m traveling first class, around the world, flying first class, staying in the finest hotels, eating in the best restaurants, wining and dining with presidents. I didn’t really want to admit that what I was doing was wrong. So there was a side of me that wanted to keep doing it.
And I think that’s also very, very telling is I think there’s a lot of people in the world today that are in this position, knowing that what they’re doing is contrary to what they really believe or what they really are saying they’re doing. But, you know, life is good, so let’s just keep doing it.
Steve Grumbine
You know, that is the story of what I see happening in the world. For real.
Like, you’re trying to figure out why you can’t get working class solidarity, and it’s because all you gotta do is pay the next guy up 5 cents more and he’s gonna fight to the death to keep that little extra bonus he’s got there. You can go back to Bacon’s Rebellion and see the same thing. I mean, that’s long, long time ago. But I’m curious about something else, too.
I mean, you dealt with the IMF [International Monetary Fund], World bank, and WTO [World Trade Organization] and you said you were in the Peace Corps, which was brought up right after dealing with Joseph Stalin and the fear of watching the commies take over the world.
And full disclosure, I’m a socialist, but when I hear that, I think to myself of modern situations, like, you know, the IMF in Ukraine, for example, and the IMF in Argentina. And you see what happened with Thomas Sankara, and he basically gave that wonderful speech that, hey, if I don’t pay you, nothing happens.
You’re fine. You’re still rich. But if I do pay you, my people suffer and they die. So he took a principled stand too.
And just like your friend, he wasn’t too long for the world either. And you saw what happened with Muammar Gaddafi when he started making a little bit of solidarity within the African continent.
He may have been a bad guy too, I don’t know. But everything I read showed that it looked like he was doing right by the people there. And lo and behold, the US, I don’t know how many hitmen went there, I don’t know how many jackals went there, but I know the US military went there. And I’m curious what your thoughts are on the role of that evil trinity of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. I mean, what was your experience with that?
Intermission
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John Perkins
Yeah, well let me start by saying that there’s a lot of people in those organizations that are decent people, good people who are caught in the same system that I was. And you know, all the education that these people get teaches them that what they’re doing is the right thing.
And so I’m going to start by saying that, that I’m not sure coming down on all the individuals.
There are certainly ones particularly at the top, that know the truth, but there’s a lot of them that don’t that were in this position like I was for seven years. Overall, I would say I think there’s two aspects here. It depends on what we’re trying to accomplish.
Now if the United States is really concerned with its self defense and if it’s concerned with being a world leader, there’s an old proverb, a Chinese proverb that says “if you want to build an empire, make friends, not enemies.”
And so using these organizations, and this includes USAID which is under attack right now, and that do a lot to promote the United States self-interests. They may be criticized for not really helping the poor people of these other countries.
And that’s a very fair criticism, one I often make, and that’s not a hundred percent. There are some projects that do, but overall their main goal is to promote the US hegemony.
And by “the US,” I also include many of our allies, our former allies at least like Europe, Canada, Mexico, et cetera, may be former allies now. And so that really helps us as a world dominating country. It’s not there necessarily to make the world a better place.
And when we drop these programs or when we misuse them, we feed into the hands of today it’s China. And we’ve been extremely successful at screwing up and giving China an open door to go in and dominate world trade.
And today incidentally, China dominates about 80% of the world’s countries as their number one trading partner. 25 years ago in the year 2000 we had 80% of the world. Today they have, it’s reversed.
And one of the reasons, and incidentally, I taught in an MBA program in Shanghai.
To the Chinese students, one of the reasons is that they learn from our mistakes and our successes and their economic hitmen are doing a much better job or better, much more efficient job than we have done. But the other reason is that we’ve really screwed up.
We put so much money and resources after 911 into Iraq and Afghanistan and then other parts of the, particularly the Middle east, but parts of Africa, parts of Africa in a militaristic way. China didn’t do that. And China didn’t get involved in wars it couldn’t win.
Instead, China used its resources to expand trade, to make friends, to do very much what, what I did as an economic hit man make these huge loans bringing Chinese companies to build. They’re doing the same thing and the same goal of dominating resources and being the world leader. Their own hegemony, that’s their goal.
But they’re doing it in a much better way. And part of that is through their BRICS [New Development] bank , which is somewhat equivalent to our World Bank.
But they somehow are able in the process to create friends while we often create enemies. I think that’s something that the United States really needs to look at. We really need to look at it right now.
When this current administration talks about, you know, becoming more efficient and cutting back on things like foreign aid and, and USAID, I think they really have to ask themselves who are they shooting? I mean the answer is we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. When we do that, we’re opening the door wider to China.
And whether you believe that foreign aid is misdirected or World Bank funds are misdirected, which I do believe is very often the case.
Nonetheless, those programs in general help the United States establish itself in these countries, has a very strong influence on putting countries in debt, gives you a tremendous power over countries. And now it’s China that’s doing it much more efficiently and with a smile on their face.
So they don’t demand of countries that they follow the US model of the perceived democracy, allowing US Corporations to come in. They have a very different philosophy that they spread to other countries, which to the other countries appears at least to be more attractive.
And one final thing. China’s economic hitmen have an incredible story to tell.
They can say that they had 30 years of 10% economic growth on average, and they brought 900 million people out of dire poverty, more than twice the population of the United States. No other country has ever done anything like that.
Steve Grumbine
Amen.
John Perkins
In the meantime, the US middle class has dropped from 60% to 50%. We’ve gone in the opposite direction.
So if you’re the president of a country in Africa or Latin America and you hear the Chinese story and you look at the American story, you think, well, by God, their models are built on my country.
Steve Grumbine
That’s very well said. I work with some very, very good friend economists that work in China and work in Africa.
In fact, one of them wrote to me when I told him last night that I was going to be talking to you today, he said, hey, you know, go ahead and ask him these questions. So if you don’t mind, my friend is named Dr. Fadhel Kaboub. He works with Africa a lot. Power switch [PowerShift] Africa.
And one of the things that he was asking was, is Trump pulling the US out of all these multilateral spaces going to weaken the US economic leverage, which you just said? Yes. And is it eventually going to make the US resort to its only remaining leverage, which is military force, which you’ve said over and over again has been their MO so the question I have from him is Trump is really continuing the destruction of the American democracy, economy and international legitimacy.
It’s a process that began in the 80s and is now maturing under Trump and with his in your face style. The problem is that that is gas wrecked most of the world in the process.
And, and the scary part is that dying empire without any economic or moral leverage will increasingly resort to violence, and the US reigns supreme in that regard. Do you agree? I mean, do you see the negative decline here, creating more wars or bringing about more conflict?
John Perkins
I think that’s entirely possible.
I would hope that it’s not where we’re going to go, but yeah, I think history would tell us that dying empires often resort to drastic means, and we are a dying empire, and China’s the rising empire. There’s no question about that trajectory being reversed. I think there’s still time to turn that around.
But the current policies of this administration are doing the opposite. They’re opening the door wider and wider and wider to China. They’re putting us in a much more disadvantageous position.
And what will that result in ultimately? I don’t know, you know, and I think that would depend on who’s in charge of the United States at the time.
So much of everything depends on leadership and who’s in charge of each country and who’s in charge of China.
I think the fact of the matter is the United States is in decline, and it’s going to be precipitous in the next few years vis a vis the rest of the world, vis a vis China. China is going to continue to be on the ascendancy. And I also think that our democracy in the United States is being terribly threatened right now.
I think we’ve entered an era where we may have seen the last of what we call American democracy.
And if you think about it, historically speaking, we’re a very young country, and yet we’ve had democracy for the longest time of anyone, you know, ever since the 1770s or 1780s. And history shows that systems change rapidly. This system has never been under attack before the way it is now, except perhaps during the Civil War.
And even then, I’m not sure democracy was under attack. The unification of two parts of the country that is a democracy was under attack. Today, I think democracy is really under attack.
And at the same time, the world is seeing that. And one of our biggest selling points has always been, hey, we’ll help you create a democracy. I don’t think we can say that anymore.
And at the same time, we’re pulling back in so many ways from. From the WHO (World Health Organization), USAID. We’re threatening NATO, you know, we’re threatening our neighbors.
We’re threatening Canada, we’re threatening Mexico, we’re threatening Panama, we’re threatening Colombia, we’re even beginning to threaten Europe. That old adage, if you want to build an empire, make friends, not enemies. Well, we’re making a lot of enemies.
Steve Grumbine
Yeah. I mean, we’re making enemies even within our own country here.
I mean, austerity is one of the cruelest tools that capital and state governments can deploy against their own people.
And right now, you’re watching the slashing and burning of federal finances that are, you know, they matriculate through, you know, your states and your state governments and all the local communities and so forth. When you cut at the top, it. There’s no escaping the bottom. And you look at all the states in the US for example, many of them don’t have enough money to get through a downturn. Most of them don’t have enough money to fully fund their pensions. Most of them are cutting back on schools. Literally.
The grab for privatization and to wipe out the public commons, the public purpose, if you will, for its citizens, is directly, you know, an assault.
If you go back to the COVID time period when we got to watch our supply chains, the global supply chains, breaking down repeatedly because it was so fragile, you know, there’s got to be some sort of repurposing or rebuilding or reconfiguring to make this thing work.
I mean, if we’re going to become a protectionist country, which I do not support, but if we’re going to become that kind of thing, there’s a whole lot of work that’s got to be done pulling that back. And I think you were very spot on when you said we have a death economy.
And when you have a death economy and you have a country that doesn’t care about what it does as long as it makes profit for the wealthiest, I don’t see the avenues to making change.
Well, let’s put this way, I don’t see the standard avenues of like, let’s go vote, let’s put a sticker on our forehead, let’s talk to everybody about how great it was to vote. I don’t see that being the powerhouse change agent we need to stop this insanity from happening.
And I know that that nebulous cloud that I’m picturing out there that anybody can insert revolution or insert direct action or inserts, that’s scary. But I don’t see a standard pathway, you know, of, hey, we’re just going to vote for the best, blah, blah, blah.
I don’t see that pathway there, and I haven’t seen it for a very long time. There was a Princeton study that came out back, I think it was in 2011 [2004], that basically said public opinion has zero percent impact on public policy.
And that was a gut punch to me because I was still naive enough to believe we had a democracy. That democracy, whatever it was, doesn’t appear to exist anymore. You seem hopeful. I’m curious, what do you think is the pathway to fixing this?
John Perkins
Well, I don’t know that I’m terribly hopeful these days.
Steve Grumbine
He’s just. I’m quoting you from the.
Because one of the things that jumped out at me in the, I guess the second book were, and I’ll be honest with you, I did not read the third book yet, but that’s on my queue while we’re talking. I just ordered it. I’m curious, you know, where’s hope lie? Or is this much later time than we think?
John Perkins
Well, I think I was hopeful even after Trump got elected that he wouldn’t follow through on a lot of these things, which he’s now following through on. I see the last couple of weeks since he’s been inaugurated as extremely dangerous for the United States.
And I love this country, and I love democracy or the idea that what we ever had of it, which was always far from perfect, but at least I think we’re on an upward trajectory most of the time. I have ancestors who fought in the American Revolution and every war since, except the most current one, and I’m really scared for this country.
And one of the approaches that I think can be most effective is to continually point out the way that we’re feeding into China’s hands.
And if we really believe in national security, if we really believe in taking care of ourselves, then we’ve got to understand that we have a big role in the world. The world looks to us. We’ve always been the leader, but that’s changed a lot in the last 25 years and continues to.
We’ve now lost our position as number one trading partner and investor in most of the rest of the world.
And that in and of itself is scary, because, as you say, when you’re in decline like that, you may resort to much more drastic means which could lead to devastating wars. And so I think to point out that these policies that we’re implementing are feeding right into China’s hands.
We’ve never been in this position before. We’ve never had an adversary who was so threatening to us as China.
Now, the Soviet Union, back during the Cold War, when I was an economic hitman, they really didn’t have much to offer the world. I traveled in Latin America. Nobody in Latin America wanted to have a government like the Soviet Union. They were willing to take money.
Many of them, philosophically, were Marxists, but the Soviet Union was not a Marxist country. So they did not look to the Soviet Union as an ideal. And the Soviet Union had very little money. It wasn’t taking over trade in the world.
What it had was nuclear weapons. So we were scared of it. And it could use those. And people like Khrushchev used them very effectively to scare everybody.
But today we’re up against a country who has an economy that’s almost as big as ours, in some measurements, even bigger, and certainly is much more global today than ours. That’s China. And we’ve never been in this position before, since the American Revolution, and we’re feeding right into China’s hands.
And I would like the American public to really understand that, if for no other reasons, forget about the ideology of democracy, forget about all this stuff that’s defined as woke and has been a huge turn off to a lot of people. It’s one of the reasons Trump is in power is because we all talk in these highfalutin terms.
The fact of the matter is we are opening the door around the world to China taking over. And I don’t think that’s a good thing. I think we need to combat it. I think it’s healthy to have competition with China.
I’m not saying that China is an enemy. I do not see China as the enemy. I see them as a competitor that’s beating us out.
And if you happen to own a business and you’ve got a competitor and you see them beating you out, you want to compete more strongly. You don’t necessarily want, you don’t see them as your enemy.
You want to see them as a driving force to make you do your job better, to make you get better. And that’s how I would like to see this now that China is forcing us to get better. But I think right now we’re getting worse.
Steve Grumbine
You know, one of the things that I believe personally is more cooperation. Right. I do have an MBA, so I know fluent business terminology and business thinking.
But from a geopolitical standpoint, I think that the problem, and this is just my perception, is that in the pursuit of dominance rather than cooperation, which could have led to everyone prospering, so to speak, it’s been domination. And China, to your point, decided we’re not going to play in the pew, pew, shoot them up game.
We’re going to go ahead and we’re going to build strong relationships with the Global South, who you have used your debt slavery to trap them in unfixable ways. And we’re going to provide an alternative.
And one of the things that I’ve seen with China also is that because of their trade with the United States, they have so many dollar holdings, they’re able to actually play a role in providing dollar liquidity around the world.
So in theory, they could pay off all the Global South US dollar denominated debt with their US dollar holdings, still have enough to facilitate transactions between the US and them and utterly ice us out of that game that you once played as the economic hitman trapping them in those IMF type arrangements that they just can’t get out of. I mean, I look at [Javier] Milei right now who is just ravishing his country with austerity and insane libertarian logic.
And then I see over across the way with [Volodymyr] Zelensky, you know, the IMF has come in to sweep away their problems as well. But my fear is once again that these things are not done with the intention of trying to make folks better. They’re intended for control.
It’s the hook that they’re trying to attach to these folks. And I don’t see the positive outcome there at all.
In fact, from my vantage point, you know, I think a lot of countries, like look at what happened with Russia when we cut them off the SWIFT system. We started planting bases around Russia and Russia said to hell with that. So our tactics just ain’t meant for collaboration.
They’re not cooperative at all. They’re very coercive. And I think that that’s going to continue our downfall if we don’t change that.
So I worry, I mean, I genuinely worry about what life is going to be like for the average US citizen since we stopped manufacturing stuff and since quite frankly our leaders are hell bent on being saber rattlers around the world. I mean, this doesn’t feel good to me. I don’t know. What are your thoughts? I said a lot there, I’m sorry.
John Perkins
Well, I agree it’s a very dangerous time, very dangerous. And democracy is under attack. And as I said, we’ve never had true democracy, but we’ve probably come as close to it as any country.
Certainly we’ve come closer to it than any other major power in the world. And it’s very much under attack. So what do we want for our future?
What do we want for our children if we become isolationists in a country like the United States? That just isn’t going to work. We’ve made too many enemies around the world.
We’re confronted with a country that’s extremely capable of knocking us out. China is so much more advanced than most of us are willing to say.
Yes, come up with a AI system that’s far superior to what we consider to be our best, ChatGPT. And they’ve now got a stealth plane that’s better than any of ours. You know, they’re not copying our technology necessarily.
They may be bouncing off of it, but people have always done that. They’re doing an amazing job. And incidentally, they’re not the closed system that we want to believe.
My past two books of the economic hitman Trilogy were both published in China, in Chinese, by a big publishing house there. When I wrote this third book, which is highly critical of China, it exposes, talks about what their economic hitmen do, but it also talks about the way they’ve built some terrible projects around the world. Dams that are doomed to fail in. In Latin America and. And so on and so forth. A lot of things.
So I and my publishers figured that this book would never be published in China, and it just has been. I got a copy of it. If we were on video. We have a copy of it right here.
Steve Grumbine
Wow.
John Perkins
And by the same publishing house, a big one. It’s already very popular in China. I’m on Chinese podcasts and being interviewed by their media.
So it’s got me rethinking about what does Chinese censorship really mean?
And I think we have an incredibly biased opinion of China and we like to focus on the bad things about China, but it’s the good things, it’s the clever things, it’s the intelligence that’s driving China to become the world leader. And at the same time, we’re doing some very, very miscalculated strategies around the world that are just, I keep using this expression, opening the door wider and wider to have China step in.
Steve Grumbine
Well, I tell you what, John, I really appreciate your time here. This has been a wonderful experience for me. I know we got a hard stop here. I want to give you the last word. Let me just say this.
It has been an absolute honor and a privilege to speak to you today, and I hope I get a chance to talk to you again in the future. It’s been wonderful.
John Perkins
It’s been my privilege. And let’s. Yeah, let’s do it again. I really, really appreciate all that you’re doing.
The last words are I’ve got a new book coming out in about a month or two, and it’s going to be only digital, and I’m going to send the first chapter free to everybody who’s on my newsletter list. So sign up.
It’s johnperkins.org is my website, and you can put your email in a little box there, and then you can buy the rest of the book for something around $10 and tried to price it at a really good price. And incidentally, it is a novel, but it deals with these subjects in a very different way.
I wanted to reach an audience that just isn’t interested in reading nonfiction, even when it’s written in the story form. So I wrote this one as a novel and it’s been a lot of fun, and I’d love to stay connected with your audience.
So my website, johnperkins.org put your email address in that little box. And I think it’s important for all of us to realize that we’re living at very fascinating times. We should be, we should feel blessed to be part of this, because we do have the opportunity to create a life economy, to transform the death economy to a life economy. And it may be that the current state of affairs in the United States is pushing us more and more in that direction.
And sometimes you need to be slapped in the face in order to wake up. And maybe that’s what’s happening. But I think for all your listeners to feel that we are part of an incredible time in history.
History is changing totally. And the way we see ourselves as human beings being human on this planet, this amazing planet that we call home, is in transition.
We’re all part of that.
So let’s enjoy being part of it, and let’s make sure that we come through it in a way that our grandchildren and great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren will look back at and thank us for.
Steve Grumbine
That’s fantastic. When we put this show out, we put out show notes and we put out extras, and so all the links and things like that will be included.
So I’m very, very happy to do that. And we’ll definitely position that newsletter out there so people can sign up. And without further ado, let me go ahead and close this out.
My name is Steve Grumbine. I am the host of Macro N Cheese. We are part of Real Progressives, which is a 501c3, not for profit.
We survive on your donations, however small or however large. We appreciate your time, we appreciate your support. Help us have great shows like this one, which I just did with Mr. Perkins here.
John Perkins is a great author. Check him out. So, John, on behalf of myself and yourself here with Macro N Cheese, we are out of here.
End Credits
Production, transcripts, graphics, sound engineering, extras, and show notes for Macro N Cheese are done by our volunteer team at Real Progressives, serving in solidarity with the working class since 2015. To become a donor please go to patreon.com/realprogressives, realprogressives.substack.com, or realprogressives.org.
Extras links are included in the transcript.
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