Summary of John Perkins's The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 I was a twenty-three-year-old volunteer assigned to develop credit and savings cooperatives in communities deep in the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador in 1968. I was shocked by the hovels along the runway.

#2 I was assigned to help a group of campesino brick makers in the high Andes. I was told that the brick makers needed to improve the efficiency of their archaic ovens, but they came to me complaining about the men who owned the trucks and warehouses down in the city.

#3 I had grown up feeling poor in my boarding school in New Hampshire, but suddenly I was making a great deal of money, traveling first class, and meeting with heads of state. I had it made.

#4 I had become so used to my life of luxury that I had begun to take on debt to support it. I had become miserable, and I was operating out of fear - the fear of communism, losing my job, and not having the material things that everyone told me I needed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669385585

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Insights on John Perkins's The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I was a twenty-three-year-old volunteer assigned to develop credit and savings cooperatives in communities deep in the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador in 1968. I was shocked by the hovels along the runway.

#2

I was assigned to help a group of campesino brick makers in the high Andes. I was told that the brick makers needed to improve the efficiency of their archaic ovens, but they came to me complaining about the men who owned the trucks and warehouses down in the city.

#3

I had grown up feeling poor in my boarding school in New Hampshire, but suddenly I was making a great deal of money, traveling first class, and meeting with heads of state. I had it made.

#4

I had become so used to my life of luxury that I had begun to take on debt to support it. I had become miserable, and I was operating out of fear - the fear of communism, losing my job, and not having the material things that everyone told me I needed.

#5

I had to take responsibility for my life and the lives of those around me. I realized that like the Andean brick makers, I had to take responsibility for what I was doing to myself and to those around me.

#6

I was an only child, born into the middle class in 1945. My parents were strict, moralistic, and staunchly Republican. They did not want me to socialize with the townie girls, whom my father sometimes referred to as sluts. I had no friends.

#7

I was determined to show up my rich classmates and leave Tilton behind forever. I was awarded a full scholarship to Brown. I chose Brown mainly because I preferred being an athlete, and because it was located in a city.

#8

I was raised on tales about my colonial ancestors, and I had visited all the New England and upstate New York battle sites of the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars. I was excited to join the Army Special Forces, but I had a change of heart when the media exposed the atrocities and inconsistencies of US policy.

#9

I was offered a job to start training in the art of spying, but before I officially accepted it, I impulsively attended a seminar given at BU by a Peace Corps recruiter.