Here's a slice from page 16 of my library's copy of the book:
Like U.S. citizens in general, most MAIN employees believed we were doing countries favors when we build power plants, highways, and ports. Our schools and our press have taught us to perceive all of our actions as altruistic. Over the years, I've repeatedly heard comments like, "If they're going to burn the U.S. flag and demonstrate against our embassy, why don't we just get out of their damn country and let them wallow in their own poverty?The larger question then becomes, how do we get back to government "of the people, for the people, and by the people?"
People who say such things often hold diplomas certifying that they are well educated. However, these people have no clue that the main reason we establish embassies around the world is to serve our own interests, which during the last half of the twentieth century meant turning the American republic into a global empire. Despite credentials, such people are as uneducated as those eighteenth-century colonists who believed that the Indians fighting to defend their lands were servants of the devil...
..."We're [Economic Hit Men] paid - well paid - to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of your job is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire - to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, these leaders bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. Meanwhile, the owners of the U.S. engineering and construction companies become very wealthy."
3 comments:
I need to check out that book. Have you read Noam's "Hegemony or Survival"? If not, I think you'll love it.
Truly, 'nation' is only a title anymore.
It takes two
"We're [Economic Hit Men] paid - well paid - to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of your job is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty.
It's impossible to cheat an honest man. The problem is less that US internationals are run by opportunists, it's that many countries are run by kleptocracies whose sole interest is engorging their Swiss bank accounts. The so-called 'Hit Men' are merely the tool by which kleptocrats loot their own country's treasury. Of course, that couldn't happen in the USA.
As far as snaring leaders in debt, it isn't the leaders who are ensnared it's the people. We are going to repay all those Treasury loans due our lenders, China and Japan. Government borrowing is just another tax postponed, plus interest.
So-called 'soverign lending' is a world of its own. Lenders who rely on foreign governments to tax their own people to repay debt often find themselves repaid in a devalued foreign currency. Inflation is the tax that the weakest government can collect. As Treasury Secretary in a small poor country, which would you rather do? try to pry money out of the hands of the rich or roll the printing presses?
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