Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The New Confession

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The New Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man 20160528

Anytime soon either. Progress. We have to go forward well, you can make it come back if you restrict peoples ability to vote and control their reproduction. [laughter] and thats what the fight is right now. Were at the heart of it. Were at the heart of, you know [inaudible conversations] i think weve got time for one more. Wheres my timer . I have a san antonio question. The Economic Innovation Group came out with a study recently talking about income inequality, and san antonio is one of those places where theyre side by side, some of the worst poverty and well off. And i was thinking about your point about women having children out of wedlock more and more. And i think historically weve always been taught to think thats a bad thing, thats something that we need to help those women not do. Just like we need to improve the educational system and everything. Are we thinking about this wrongly . I believe that we are. I am, however, a lefty feminist. [laughter] it is conservative dogma, and you can hear from many republicans who really believe for persuasive reasons that one of the cures for poverty is, in fact, a reestablishment of marriage as an early norm. Any republican politician will tell you this. And they will tell you it in terms that make sense. Like its one income, how are you going to raise a kid on one income, you know . I believe the reverse is true. I believe that stabilizing people economically promotes and im not particularly interested in repromoting marriage as a norm, but promote emotional and familial stability. So what youre asking is a question that theres a real fight about. I happen to be on the side that says the kind of policies i was talking about earlier; higher minimum wages, paid leave, expanded welfare programs, more protected pay and reproductive control. That contributes to stabilizing populations financially that then better enables them to form the kind of bonds and raise the kind of families that are going to be, you know, healthier and more economically stable. Conservatives will tell you that its about repromoting early marriage as the norm. So its a fundamental disagreement. I think were going to have to stop, but thank you all for a great, greater great session. [applause] im going to remind you, wait they will be signing books, again, on the second floor the gallery. The gallery, okay. My instructions were wrong. And dont forget to shop in the book tent and in the gallery. Youre good. [laughter] tell her i did it. [inaudible conversations] we want to hear from you. Tweet us your feedback about the programs you see here. Twitter. Com booktv. As chief economist at a Major International consulting firm, john perkins advised the world bank, the United Nations, the International Monetary fund, the u. S. Treasury department, fortune 500 corporations and leaders of countries in africa, asia, latin america and the middle east. His groundbreaking expose the confessions of an economic hitman spent an astonishing 73 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list. His books have sold more than one million copies. He is also a founder and board member of the to nonprofits dream change and the alliance. Would you please give a big round of amaze and help us welcome john perkins. [applause] thank you. Thanks, clay. Thanks to this amazing independent bookstore. A round of applause for this bookstore. We love these independent bookstores. Thank you. [applause] thank you all for being here tonight. Its a great pleasure to be here with you. I think, well, i wanted to actually share a st. Patricks day story with you. [laughter] happy st. Patricks day. So a couple years ago i was in washington, d. C. , and i was at a dinner with a bunch of people from the state department, very highlevel people at the tate department. State department. And i was actually in washington to speak at the green festival. And somebodys mentioned to one of these highlevel people that i was there to speak at the green festival, and he says, oh, my gosh, but its not st. Patricks day yet. [laughter] thats the state department for you. [laughter] so i think my being here begs the question, why would i write a new confessions of an economic hitman 12 years after the original was written . And theres really two parts to that answer, to that question. One is that things have changed so radically since then. The whole economic hitman system that i describe in my book is taking place in the developing countries. There is now like a cancer, metastasized, and its spread to the United States, europe and the rest of the world. And the second part of the question is that people around the planet have become aware of this. Were waking up. Theres a consciousness revolution. People everywhere are understanding that this systems a failure and that we live on a very tine theny space station tiny space station without any shuttles. We cant get off. Were going to have to fix it, were going to have to take care of it. And i think also then, to realize where we are today begs four questions. One is how did we get to this situation that were in today, a space station thats on the verge of crashing . And two, what the system . Three, do we have any reason to help we can change it, and, four, if we have reason to hope, what do we do to change it . So id like to answer those questions tonight. I want to start by saying, yes, we have tremendous hope. I have tremendous hope. I know that were winning this revolution, this battle, this war, this movement. Were winning it, and were going to continue to win it. And were going to move forward, and were going to create something marvelous. But lets go back and take a look at this first question, how did we get here. And i think im in a rather unique position to describe that because i was in the front lines of creating some of the problems as an economic hit man. My real job was to identify countries with resources that our corporations covet like oil. Arrange a huge loan to that country from the world bank or one of its sister organizations. However, the money didnt go to the country, it went to our own corporations like one not too far from here, bechtel, and a number of others who made huge profits off these deals and built big Infrastructure Projects like Power Systems and industrial parks, highways, ports, airports, things that would benefit as few wealthy families in these countries the ones who own the industries and the commercial establishments but didnt help the majority of the people. In fact, the majority of the people suffered tremendously because money was diverted from paying for health care, education and other social services to go toward trying to pay the interest on the loan. In the end, the principal was never paid. And so wed go back to the country and say since you cant pay your debt, sell your resource, oil or whatever, real cheap to our corporations without any social regulations or environmental restrictions or privatize, sell your utilities, sell your water and sewage system, sell your schools, sell your prisons to our corporations. And in the few cases where we failed, the jackals would go in. And these are people that either overthrow governments or assassinate their leaders. Twomy clients two of my clients who actually became good friends, the democraticallyelected president of ecuador and the head of state of panama, they had tremendous integrity. They didnt buy into my deals. I couldnt convince them. [laughter] and they were both assassinated by cia assets. And so in this way oh, and ill just also mention that when the jackals also a fail as with Saddam Hussein and gadhafi of libya who had very good security forces, were hard to get at, when the jackals also failed, then the military would go in. So in this way we created first truly global empire. Its not an american empire, its a corporate empire. And its global. Its the first global one. And its become even more prevalent since those days. So i would just like to share with you a little story to give a little more detail about that. Using the ecuadoran president , for example. Ive been i became chief economist, economic hitman. And i was sent back to ecuador. There was a military junta in charge, and they were our puppets. We controlled them. The Oil Companies were making huge progress in the amazon destroying the ecuadoran amazon, and a lot of you know the texaco chevron story. How many of you know about the alliance . All right. You know im a cofounder with bill and lynn twist, and if you dont know, john perkins. Org, and itll take you there. Were working on correcting a lot of the mistakes that were made during that time. The military junta was supporting Oil Companies, and eventually in the late 70s, a decision was made to have democratic elections. Its a long story. The details are in the new confessions of an economic hitman, how that came about. To make the long story short, the elected president ran on a platform that said the revenues from ecuadoran oil are going to help the ecuadoran people. Texaco and the other Oil Companies are going to pay a fair share of their profits to the ecuadoran people. So as soon as he won the election, i was sent down along with other economic hitmen to convince him not to fulfill his campaign promises. To convince him by getting him to to take large loans that would make his family and friends very wealthy, because these projects do that for the people in contl. Jaime refused. He had tremendous integrity. And no matter what i did, he wouldnt go along with it. Id try and do the same thing with the panamanian president , and he also refused. And yet these men both knew that salvador yen day had been taken out by the cia in chile, the guatemalan president , vietnam, they were very familiar with these stories, and i would tell them these stories. Listen, you play the game and get rich or in this pocket over here ive got a couple of hundred Million Dollars for your family. This is a metaphor, but basically if you dont play the game in this pocket, the jackals are right behind me. I didnt actually carry a gun, but they did. Nonetheless, jaime had tremendous integrity and died in an airplane crash in may of 1981. Theres no question that it was a rigged plane crash. The panamanian president got his family together right after that and said my brother jaime has been assassinated, and im probably next. But dont worry too much about me, because ive accomplished what i the most important thing i came here to accomplish, i signed the canal treaty with jimmy carter. The panama canal is going to be in the hands of the panamanian people. Thats what i wanted to see happen. Less than three months later, the exact same thing happened to him. It was almost the same plane that crashed with him aboard, killing him. And, you know, in more recent times weve seen, just in 2009, something very similar happened to the president of honduras who tried to raise the minimum wage of honduras by 60 . And big corporations like chiquita and dole and other global corporations, u. S. Corporations objected to this. The economic hitmen went to honduras in 2009, tried to convince him to come around. He wouldnt, so he was taken out in a coup. He was not assassinated. And i think we all know now whats happened in honduras just in the last two weeks weve seen two very, very important environmental activists assassinated in honduras. In the three years after he was taken out, 101 environmental activists were assassinated in honduras. Its now the most dangerous country in the hemisphere, maybe in the world. These are the things that happen. And today we have another whole set of economic hitmen who have come to the United States. As i said earlier. These are wall street moguls, bankers. They go by the name of consultant, political adviser, and the vulture capital people, the managers of these vulture Capital Funds like ones that just settled a deal with argentina for argentina to pay them almost 5 billion, these are for economic hitmen. This is whats happened to the system. This is whats brought us to here. And i go into great detail in the book about all of these different forms of the new economic hitmen that have come along, but ill just share a couple of things with you. I met with a bank, senior Bank Vice President from chase bank not too long ago. Its in the book in detail, but in the short version he explained to me, he said, you know, back a few years ago we bankers, we had a lot of integrity. If you came to me and asked me for a 500,000 loan for your house, a house you wanted to buy. Id probably try to convince you to buy a 300,000. Because i didnt want to foreclose. But after 9 11, which was really the cutoff date, after 9 11 we all got together and kind of decided, no, were going to tell you go ahead and take out a 700,000 loan. You may have to tighten your belt, but in the end youll be able to to get twice for that in a few years. Then, of course, the market crashes, the person loses their house, the bank repackages it and sells it to some developer, makes a double profit off of it. And this banker was very frank about this. This is whats been happening in our industry. Weve been brought up all our lives to trust, they failed us. Our politicians, you know, every politician out there just about accepts a lot of money from big corporations for campaign, their campaign financing, and they also are told that if they dont get elected or if they decide not to run next time, theyll have very lucrative consulting jobs. One example out of many, christopher dodd. Chris dodd of connecticut was a senator for about 20 years. Highly respected. He was chairman of the Senate Banking committee, and when he ran for president , the Financial Services industry gave him huge amounts of donations for his campaign. The very people that he was watchdogging. Thats extreme corruption. Thats this modern form of economic hitmen. And i dont have time to go into any more detail on that, but theres a lot in the book about this whole new branch of economic hitmen. We use all the tools that i use in these developing countries, but theyre then used here. Debt, student debt, credit card debt, health care debt, you know . Debt is slavery. Its being used in such a big way. But i want to move on to the second question, what drives the system . Well, as i said earlier, this new global empire is a corporate empire. And its driven by one goal, to maximize profits regardless of the social and environmental costs. Now, thats a new goal. When the American Revolution was actually fought not against the king of england, but against the east India Company which controlled the king of england. Look, people dont think that way very often, but the east India Company controlled more than half the worlds trade in those days, and it basically wrote the laws for england. The king of england was part of that organization. And the east India Company was extremely powerful. And once the colonists won their freedom from england, the founders decided no corporation should ever have that kind of power again. Imagine that. So the laws were written across the land that no corporation in the United States, in any state could get a charter unless it guaranteed to serve a Public Interest. Nothing about profit. That was maintained for over a hundred years. Charters lasted on average for ten years. Then the corporation had to go back and demonstrate that it had served a Public Interest and would continue to do so. That all ended in the late 1800s when john k. Rockefeller convinced john d. Rockefeller convinced the state of delaware to change that law. My Oil Companies cant work under that kind of agreement. Youve got to change the law. Oh, and if you do, well pay really good taxes, and you legislators can make a lot of money off this deal. And as we all know, its gotten worse since then. But when i was in Business School in the late 60s, there was still this concept of Public Interest, Public Service. I was taught in Business School that a good ceo makes a decent rate of return for investors and also serves the Public Interest, basically. Takes good care of his employees, takes good care of his customers and pays taxes, is a good citizen. Imagine paying taxes if youre a corporation. Pays taxes and also contributes money to the Education System and recreational facilities. That all changed almost exactly 200 years to the day after the original intent of the Public Service thing was signed. This all changed in 1976 when Milton Friedman won the nobel prize in economics by stating amongst other things, and probably the most important thing he said was the only responsibility of business is to maximize profits, regardless of the social and environmental costs. And businesses have bought into that ever since. Its given license to ceos in fact, some would say a mandate to ceos to do whatever it takes to maximize profits, including corrupting the system. Government system. And yet its a relatively new concept, just in 76. And when Milton Friedman came up with that concept, we had everyone believed we had a shortage of capital and an abundance of nature. We had plenty of resources. That was the belief in 76. Many of you can remember that, im sure. And the that the earth would absorb whatever trash we threw at her, you know . The air, the water, the earth. Nobody was talking about peak oil. Nobody was talking about Climate Change in those days. So maybe friedman had something going for him at that time. But what we know now is things have changed radically. And so what drives this system today, this concept of maximizing profits regardless of social and environmental costs is no longer valid. We cant live with it any longer, can we . No you live with it any longer . No. Were going to change it, ar

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