YouSaid · the spoken record

John Perkins

lines on the record: 49
first: 2024-05-08
most recent: 2024-05-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Solar and wind have been improving rapidly, but they're still in their infancy. So we've got this incredible opportunity. So I'd like to leave people with the idea that we should all feel very blessed to be alive at this time. When we're facing big crises, but we have incredible opportunities. Move the human experience to a new level of consciousness and action that takes us to a completely new understanding of what it means to be successful human beings. Being human on this amazing planet where we live.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think the message is one of, well, I not think, I know the message is one of hope that we are in a time of extreme crisis and challenge and also incredible opportunity. As I travel around the world speaking at various events or as I do lots of podcasts in many countries, I'm just about to do one after this with a podcast in South Africa. And people around the world are, there's a consciousness revolution. People are really understanding that we cannot continue with this economic system we have, which we call the death economy. We have to move into a system where we pay people to mine the plastic in the oceans and recycle it, to plant trees and to reforest areas and to filling old mine pits and to create new technologies for energy and other things that we haven't even dreamed of yet.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Scale a lot of places don't take money anymore. I can't always put so many places where I shop. You can't buy anything with, you know, with currency. You've got to use credit, including on the airlines. We're definitely moving in that direction. How that plays out, though, remains to be seen. And it's hard to believe that the big, powerful economies like China and the United States and the European Union Won't somehow worm their way into having control over these systems”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that possibility is there. However, if you look historically at this powerful empires, they usually are able to overcome those kinds of obstacles. And we know that China now is implementing its own sort of form of cryptocurrency. So I suspect that maybe what will happen is that the smart, you know, countries like China, maybe the United States will somehow co-opt the crypto movement. I don't know. I mean, I think that we are going to move away from the central banking system because it's just plain not working well. And basically everybody knows that whether they want to admit it or not is another question. And cryptocurrency is here. And we all use it, you know, to a certain degree. Like even if you've never bought anything, you use a credit card. We're all dealing in digitized forms of currency.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that's a great example of how competition can make you stronger. And we all need to unify now to create, to transform this death economy, this economic system that's polluting and consuming itself towards self-destruction into a life economy that pays people to clean up pollution, develop new technologies that don't ravage the earth.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we were highly competitive. And then we came together as a doubles team in big matches with other schools. We were the number one doubles team. And so now the skills that we've developed competing with each other are serving us as a team”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think that's probably a smart move on the part. But I think the idea of demonizing them or seeing them as an enemy in some sort of a war or defining it as even defining it as an economic war to me is a big mistake. It's a strong competition. We are extremely competitive with China. They're competitive with us. That can be a good thing, though. Competition. You know, I like to think of when I was in school, I was a pretty good tennis player. And I was always vying for the number one spot on our team. I was usually number two, but I was trying to take over number one. And number one and number two, the way you took it over is to beat number one. And so we play these hard games. And I think every time we played each other, we improved.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was concerning to us, but Japan was a fairly small country, it didn't have much of a military or no military. It wasn't a real threat. China now, they come along and it's got this amazing economy. And it's also militarily very, very imposing and impressive. And there's no question, I think, that China wants to take over. They would like to replace the dollar with the UN or something. They don't want to do it too quickly because we owe them a lot of money, so they don't want to see the dollar collapse. Because that would be very harmful to them. Our NATO allies or European Union in terms of trade, in terms of finance, in terms of so many things that China has to be relatively careful and yet clearly want to be the main superpower. And they're headed in that direction. And so the United States is strongly opposing it.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back in the 70s, we went through something a little bit similar with Japan, where Japan was threatening us as they were so efficient and they worked so hard and they put in so many hours and they were moving out of a period where we said they produced junk products into one where they produced quality products. They were leaders in quality.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was one of the co authors of a book called The Game As Old as Empire, and that's what this is, really. It's building empires. And one of the biggest net producers, I think you'd say, is China. Of course, China definitely is threatening U.S. hegemony. Is China an enemy? I would really like to think of China as a competitor. But not an enemy. We're all suffering from climate change. We can't afford to have enemies. Let's face it. Wars are part of the destruction of the environment and part of our problem today. We don't need to define China's enemy. It is a competitor. But competition can be good if it drives you to be better. And I would like to think that we look at it that way, but we don't. Anybody that comes along that seems to possibly be better than us at doing anything, we object to.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And despite Saudi Arabia's fairly good relationship with Israel, despite all these other things, what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and so on, it's been a thorn in the side of the Islamic world. And so there's a lot of factors here at play. We in the United States hear about how poorly China treats its Uyghur people, the other Muslim groups. But in the Muslim world, yeah, they're concerned about that, of course. But they also know that China's 10 armies into any Muslim countries, as we have in Afghanistan and Iraq, and elsewhere. So this whole deal that's lasted since the early 70s until now, and it's still in effect, it's losing some of its teeth.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as we did after 9 11 when we hustled some of their family members out of the country and on and on. And this deal has been extremely significant. We call it the Saudi Arabia money laundering affair. Sammy kind of wasn't a money laundering affair, oil laundering affair. You know, it's beginning to fall apart now and partly because China is now becoming such a strong entity in Saudi Arabia does not want to lose that customer. That ally, and so they're wavering a little bit. And the other thing is that the Arab world has been very unhappy with the way we've treated Muslims and our stance in Israel.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chemical plants and other industries in Saudi Arabia. And at the same time, part of the deal was that Saudi Arabia would never sell oil for anything other than dollars. So as you also mentioned, Nixon had just taken us off the gold standard in 1971, I think. And the dollar was floating out there. It was the nerve wrack in time. And so now it's suddenly on the gold standard. It truly is a petrollar. And so the agreement was that Saudi Arabia wouldn't sell oil for anything other than dollars. And also they would never charge more for oil than the oil companies would ultimately be in agreement with. And our part of the deal was that we would protect Saudi Arabia as long as they kept their part of the deal. We would always stand behind them as we did during the Gulf Wars or both Gulf Wars on both Presidents Bush.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Set up an office there, and the State Department, I mean, the Treasury Department signed a very large contract with my company to develop the electrical system in that country also. But we had to work out a deal with the Saudis on this whole thing. And this wasn't about debt, because Saudi Arabia didn't need to borrow money from anybody. They had the money. We wanted them. And we also wanted to have them beholden to us so they couldn't put us, they couldn't blackmail us again like they had basically with the oil embargo. So we worked out this deal, basically whereby, as you said, Saudi Arabia would have to reinvest most of their petrodollars in U.S. Treasuries. And the interest from those treasuries bonds would be used to pay U.S. corporations to essentially westernize Saudi Arabia to build big cities that were Western type of cities to build petrol.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was quite, yeah. So the context is the early 70s when OPEC, which was led by Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia was the biggest oil producer in the world, had a lot of clout and did not like what was going on with Israel and our support of Israel and Israel defeating their world in many respects. And so there was an oil embargo imposed against the United States. And you guys are probably too young to remember it in person. But I do very well and long lines at the gas stations and our economy was in a nosedive and it looked very, very serious without oil. What are we going to do? And we were very, very dependent on imported oil. The Treasury Department comes to me and others at my company and they said, you know, we can't let this happen again. Do something. I go off to Saudi Arabia with several of my assistants, people who work for me.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I came from relatively poor teachers. I was a poor teacher's son in New Hampshire. We weren't barving or impoverished, but I had never left New England until I joined the Peace Corps. And now I'm traveling first class all over the world, whining and dining in the best restaurants, staying in the finest hotels, and hanging out with presidents. I didn't want to give that up. So once I began to understand the fallacy of the system, I didn't want to understand it. I wanted to fall for the line that everybody was out there promoting. And I think there's an awful lot of people in that situation today. Know we all lie to ourselves at one level.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll leave it at that. But yes, it's a lie as far as measuring overall prosperity is concerned. And I think there's a tremendous number of people in this industry today working for the World Bank or whoever that really believe they're doing the right thing. And at the top, they got to know the truth behind it. I believe for a long time that I was doing the right thing. And I have to tell you that once I started to understand I wasn't, and this very much by the head of state of Panama, Oma Torrijos, who understood this system and told me, John, don't you understand that what you're lying to yourself and you're selling all the rest of us a lie? Once I really understood that, I didn't want to believe it. I was making a lot of money.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it was correct. And I think, and I also, I come out of the Peace Corps and I was steeped in this idea that we could really help poor countries rise out of poverty. And, you know, I was, I'd been to business school where I saw these econometric models that show this relationship between infrastructure growth and GDP growth. And I thought GDP growth was a good measure at that time. It took me quite a long time to realize that GDP growth is basically a tool of the rich. It's a poor statistic if you want to measure true prosperity.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he was very old school, and we were looking at electrical growth. And, you know, if you could show that the economy was going to grow by, let's say, 12%, if the electrical growth went up by 9 or 10%, and Howard would say, well, he'd worked for utility industry all his life, retired as very high-up executive of a major U.S. utility company and then gone to work for our consulting firm. He'd say, well, the United States has never been electrical growth of more than 6% a year anywhere. And I would say, yes, but if you get to suppress demand, if you build these facilities and you have the electricity available, people will buy it. They just can't get it now. That's why the growth is so low. And so I believe that what I was saying was correct. And my boss very heartily was pushing me to make these much higher forecasts than how it would make. And I thought it.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that's a really good point, Preston. Yeah, you're talking about my relationship with a guy named Howard Parker, who's...”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the United Nations vote, which isn't entirely true because they do expect these countries to side with them on the Taiwan issue, but they seem less draconian. And let's face it, there's a tremendous amount of resentment against the United States and our European allies and the World Bank because of the way we've imposed our will on countries. And, you know, we've been willing to overthrow democratically elected presidents like Yende Robins. And we've, you know, we've backed terrible. In Chile and many others.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Plants we're going to do basically the same thing the United States would do, but we're also going to build you a big port, so you're going to be connected with Africa and Asia and Europe. And it's not just about China and Peru. It's about we're going to help Peru become a world integrated with the world on a commercial basis. And that's huge. Countries really like that. Oh, and incidentally, we're not going to ever try to influence your policies, your government policies. We're not going to build a military base, and China hasn't built military bases in very many places other than in its own sphere of influence with a couple of exceptions like Djibouti, where it refuels its ships that go around African horn and so forth. But it doesn't have a military prevalence. And they say, we're not going to build a military base here. We're not going to ask you to privatize your industries and sell them to our people. We're not going to ask you to vote with us.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We leave that anxiety. We're going to help you rise out of poverty. And the last one is divide and conquer. And China's made alterations in the way all of those are approached, but especially they've made a huge alteration in the last one, divide and conquer. So, for example, when the United States would go into a country, like let's move from Ecuador to Peru, like Peru for no particular reason, but just because anyway, so And they would say to Peru, hey, you know, we'll do this deal and we'll give you most favored nation in our trading agreement. So bilateral trade between Peru and the United States will be really good. China, on the other hand, goes and says, we're not interested in bilateral trade. We're interested in connecting you with the world, the new Silk Road, the Belt and Road Initiative. And so Peru, we're going to build you these power.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's both. Nico, you know, I was asked to teach at an MBA program in Shanghai, which is mainly Chinese students who had been singled out to be the future leaders of the economy of China. And very quickly, I learned the reason I'd been invited was because these students wanted to pick my brain as to what I had done that was successful, why I was successful, and what I'd done that were failures. And they've done an amazing job. They've been much more efficient in some respects. They really have learned from our mistakes and our successes. And I talk in this latest book about the four pillars of the economic hitman strategy. And one of those is fear, you know, fear, we talk about fear of Russia, fear of China or whatever, and they talk about fear of us or fear of your neighbors. And another one is death, which we've been discussing. And the third one is anxiety over insufficiency. Oh, you're really, really poor country and we're going to help.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not always what they appear to be. And I will say one other thing here that China has an incredible marketing tool, and that is if they had about 10% economic growth for 30 years, they brought about 800 million people out of poverty. They increased the middle class tremendously. At the same time, since the early 70s, the United States has not had any real increase in average minimum wage if you take the gun into inflation since the 70s. We've gone from 60% middle class down to 50%. If you're the president of a poor country and you're looking for an economic model, you're probably very, very tempted to look at the Chinese model. Not necessarily the political system, but the economic model is a very impressive one.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody should invest to go to Ecuador to do anything. And immediately the Chinese stepped in and they gave Ecuador a big loan, very low interest rates that made it easy for Ecuador to pay off the interest. And maybe coder ratings went up. And then China made another loan. And as a result, Correa, who again has a PhD from a U.S. university in economics through the United States out, basically. And he closed out. He did not renew the lease on this huge military base. The United States had to move its military base from Ecuador to Colombia. He went up against the United States and embraced China. And so now Ecuador was a lot of money to China. And China's gone in and built the huge dam, they're building big mines. They're doing the same thing that we were doing, except they've offered some better conditions, Ecuador, at least conditions that appear to be better.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Money was taken out as a loan by the military dictatorships back in the 70s without the consent of the people. The people didn't get any benefits. These military dictators now are long gone. They're living in Switzerland or Miami or someplace. And maybe they owe the money. And Korea laughingly said, maybe John Perkins owes the money. He was one of those economic hitmen that was here back then. But the Ecuadorian people don't owe it. And he refused to pay a fairly significant amount of that in the billions of dollars. And there by the Standard Poor's and Fitch ratings through Ecuador into the dump, they basically said Ecuador is a worthless country.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think the biggest unraveling force for the Washington consensus is China, because China steps in and will offer lower interest rates or better deals in other respects. Actually, we can go to Ecuador as an example when Rafael Correa was elected president. I know Correa very well. I was just recently in Mexico City on a TV program where he interviewed me. He likes my books. He is a PhD in economics from the University of Illinois, incidentally. He knows our system extremely well. He was president of Ecuador for 10 years. And one of the first things he did was to appoint a commission to look into whether Ecuadorian people really owed the money that the World Bank and IMF said Ecuador owed. And the Commission concluded that I think it was about $10 billion. I may have the number wrong, but there was a lot of money that they said, no, the Ecuadorian people don't owe this.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a couple of questions there. I think the answer to the first one is the lower interest rates did help, I think, because suddenly the banks are in a position or the economic hitman are in a position to go to countries and say, hey, look, the interest rate's pretty low. You can afford this loan. Now, maybe you couldn't afford it before in a higher interest, but now with the lower interest rates, this is the time for you to do this. And in fact, you can take out a bigger loan. You can make an analogy with a home buyer in the United States. interest rates go down the banks will tell them well you know instead of a $300,000 home you can afford a $400,000 loan because the interest rates are lower when the interest rates go up you get to go back to a less expensive home same sort of thing and as far as the so the next question was as interest rates are increasing do I see the system blowing up”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In these financial institutions, I know this is going to be the case. And before they make the loan, they'll probably check in with the IMF and make sure that the country that they're doing this with. I mean, they probably already know there's a list, but they want to make sure that where they're doing this as a country where the IMF will step in. And there may be some countries where that wouldn't happen and they wouldn't make the loan to those countries. So there is this, it's an old boy network. They all know each other very well. And at the various levels of these organizations, and they communicate with each other frequently.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you've described it very well, Nico. I don't know. Is there a more specific question? You hit it right. I was more.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“AMF, which is kind of the, you might call the policing force behind World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank. And we go in as the IMF and we say, yeah, and you've got to meet some of these other conditionalities. Let us build a military base on you. So that's exactly what happened. For example, built this huge military US military base on the coast of Ecuador and on and on. So that kind of scenario, it starts with a grant doesn't have to pay for from the USAD, and then it moves into the loan, and then it moves into the conditionality to restructure the loan.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's even going to have a referendum, and the people are going to say, Yes, my God, this whole shows that our economy is going to grow at 8% a year, and it's only has been growing at all in the last two years. We've got hyperinflation. We're going to get rid of that because the report would show that. And so then the money is diverted to a big construction company in the United States, let's say, one of the big ones we've mentioned earlier, and they go down and build the project. And meanwhile, the country is paying the interest on the loan and they're diverting money from social services or other programs to pay the interest. But in the end, they can't pay the principal. And so we go back and say, remember, the collateral is the oil. So now we're going to start taking oil. Oh, and also, and now this is when we go in.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Construction machinery in there, which is going to be a big benefit to the oil companies also. So yeah, there is that sort of thing that often goes on, not always. Anyway, so I go back to the country with this study and I say, so here, you know, with this study, the World Bank is willing to give you this very large loan, but you have to sign off on and use oil as your collateral. And so the president says, well, let me take this to the people. And gives his report to the local newspapers and says, you know, this is what I want to do.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would know, I would know if I'm in the good at my job, I know that yes, part of it is exactly what you're suggesting. And so chances are this hydroelectric plant that we're giving, that we're going back to the World Bank to say, give this country a large amount of money to hire our companies to build a hydroelectric plant, chances are the hydroelectric plant is out in the Amazonian area where the waterfalls and where the rivers are what's called the headwaters of the Amazon, the sacred headwaters area. And that's where the oil happens to be. When you build the hydroelectric plant, you're also building big roads.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And thus, this grant is used to hire my company, the consulting firm, to go in and do a study and say the World Bank is interested in giving a huge amount of money to this country, Ecuador. My job is to go in and make a study of where that money should be spent. Should it go into developing the electrical system, building hydroelectric facilities and transmission lines, or maybe it should go into highways or ports or airports? I produced a study that says the best investment would be a huge hydroelectric plant and all the transmission lines that go along with it as an example.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, those organizations are all part of what we call the Washington Consensus. Just to make it a little bit more complicated. So it's the World Bank, the sister organizations, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Treasury Department. But basically, this would be a scenario. So USAID, United States Agency for International Development, sets aside a small amount of money. In my day, it would be in several hundred thousand dollars. Now it's probably a couple of million. And it's a grant. Country. Let's stick with this case of Ecuador since we started there, but it could be so many different countries.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Growth benefits the very wealthy and powerful in those countries. And in so many of these countries in Africa and in Latin America and elsewhere, you know, very few families essentially control the economies of these countries. And these families go back to a very long time ago to colonial periods in Latin America, for example. Most of these countries have families who were given these incredible land grants, their ancestors who were generals under the Spanish conquistadores, under Cortes, at Pizarro, or on the other conquistadors who gave them huge amounts of land. And their families still have tremendous power within these countries. So they benefit significantly.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The money itself, all of it plus interest and plus more comes back because the construction company, you mentioned Halliburton, let's say, is making big profits off those, which theoretically some of it comes back to the United States, although Halliburton now is, I think, officially their headquarters is in Dubai, but notwithstanding that. And the banks are very insistent that these loans ultimately get repaid in one way or another. And at the same time, the oil is now being ciphered off or whatever the resource is out of the country to the US or international. It's called an international oil companies. So then I'm making money off that either very much. So the whole system is very, very rigged. What the country does show is that it's experienced economic growth as a result. But again, most of that economic growth.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he can take that to the local press and to his people, and it can be a very popular thing. Oh my goodness, you know, this president's done great things. He's building all these highways. Look at how the roads have improved. I was just in Ecuador, where one of the countries where he did this, and I just saw, you know, incredible road construction, and now most of the Chinese are playing the same game as we are. So they're doing the same thing. They're building hydroelectric plants and mines and so forth. And this can look very, very good on paper to the people. And let's face it, you know, presidents, even under the best conditions, don't serve for more than usually more than eight years, possibly ten in most countries. And often it's a lot fewer than that.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's a strategy. So it's defined as, in the case of the minerals, they're the collateral. So you give the loans to a country like, let's say, Ecuador. It's got a lot of oil out in the very fragile Amazon area. And you give them a big loan and you use their oil that's still in the ground as collateral. So when they can't pay their debt, you go back in and say, now, okay, so now you can let our oil companies come in and take that oil at very cheap prices without any regulations. And when you're going forward with doing this, you're pretty aware that the country is not going to be able to pay back these debts. But they are going to be able to show this economic growth. So the president is in an interesting position because he's being handed this report that we've done that shows that if he takes on these loans, the economy will grow and it probably will.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You've got to sell your oil or whatever the resource was, and today it's likely to be lithium or cobalt or some of the minerals that are used in the high tech industry. You've got to sell these to our corporations at cut rate prices without environmental or social regulations or vote with us on the next vote against Cuba at the United Nations, for example. Or let us build a military base on your soil or privatize all your public sector businesses, your water and sewage systems and so forth and sell them to our investors at low prices. Well, maybe all of those things. And so yes, we were really building this corporate empire. And at the same time, an economic system that's really failing us, what we could call a death economy that's causing climate change, that's causing income inequality. It's causing a lot of unrest around the world.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's what's called the debt trap. And it's the new, mostly convenient and successful form of imperialism, building an empire. And this empire is really a corporate empire more than an American empire. Because let's face it, Preston, many of these corporations, when they prosper, they don't help the United States. They don't help the citizens here. They don't pay taxes. They may be listed as U.S. corporations, but as we all know, a very large percentage of the most profitable Fortune 500 corporations don't pay taxes. And yeah, I did also want to mention that, you know, so when these countries couldn't pay the principal on the debt, then I go back in using the guise of the International Monetary Fund and say, hey, we can help you refinance your loan. But to do that, you've got to meet certain conditionalities.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But if you choose not to take this money in this hand, I got a gun. Yeah, I never actually carried a gun, but these presidents knew what I was talking about. There were people behind me that did carry guns.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It looks like everybody's benefiting. The fact is, GDP is an extremely biased statistic, biased toward the rich and powerful. And the other side of this coin was that if the president of the country or the minister of finance or whoever I was dealing with didn't accept these loans, they were very aware that there were people in the background we called jackals who were usually CIA assets who were prepared to overthrow the government or assassinate someone. And unfortunately the United States has a long history of this with Allende in Chile and Arbens and Guatemala. Mossadegh and Iran and Lumumba and the Congo and Zim and in Vietnam and most recently Zelaya in Honduras in 2009 where we've actually instituted these practices of overthrowing our assassinating leaders. And so these presidents know this. So basically what I'm saying is, hey, here in this house, I got a whole lot of money that's going to help you and your family and your friends.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Helping these countries become more prosperous. But over time, I began to realize that really what we were doing was making the rich of those countries richer and more powerful and helping our own corporations to make a lot of money because the people that benefited were the rich who owned the big industries, the commercial establishments, the businesses that benefited tremendously from better infrastructure. And yet the majority of the people in the country who weren't involved in these kinds of activities ended up suffering because money was diverted from healthcare, education, and other social services to pay the interest on the debt. But that's not obvious. When you show the statistics of gross domestic product GDP growth,”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Companies then would make a lot of money building big infrastructure projects in the country I had identified, things like electric power systems, industrial parks, highways, ports, airports, things that we could show would help grow the economy. You measure the economy by GDP. And so originally when I took on this job, I thought, you know, like I'm doing something really good here. I'm helping, you know.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's the third one, yeah. Yes, sir Okay, so an economic hitman, my official title was chief economist and a major international consulting firm, and I had a staff of anywhere from 30 to 50 people working for me, depending on the specific time and projects. And my job really was to identify countries that have resources that corporations want, like oil. These were usually the lower, what we call lower income or developing countries. And then I would arrange a loan for that country from the World Bank for a lot of money, but the money wouldn't actually go to the country. Instead, it would be transferred from a bank in probably in Washington, D.C. or New York, to a big construction company's bank like Halliburton or Bechtel or Brown and Root or Stone& Webster. You probably know the names.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, Preston, first of all, I just want to make sure there's a trilogy of the Economic Hitman book. I presume you're talking about the latest one, which deals with China's economic hitmen. Yes, sir Okay.”
2024-05-08 · We Study Billionaires · BTC181: The US's Economic Hitman w/ John Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT