CLAUDINE: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Dear friends,

To keep the conversation going, I wanted to share and respond to an inquiry that came in on my recent post from Tony. He wrote:

I bought the book the day after reading this interview and enjoyed it greatly. To be perfectly honest, it was the promise of reading more about the mysterious Claudine that was the real impetus. Many of Democracy Now's listeners are familiar with the role of IMF and World Bank loan adjusters, but Claudine!  She seems the be the source of the EHM term and no one else but you uses it after that. Even the men who replaced you were able to operate without any knowledge of it. This makes the lack of detail about her a real challenge to the reader.

Who was she and why did she tell you anything? The system could have, would have, and did operate without her characterization of your work. If she were an intelligence operative, it would have been unlikely that she would have told you more than you needed to know, namely, that by inflating estimates, MAINwould get more work. Telling a tutee everything makes it more likely, not less likely, that he'll defect.

It's in fact the lucidity that she imparts to you that ultimately leads you to write the book. She would have predicted that given enough tutees, one would blow the whistle sooner or later. So Claudine becomes even more mysterious.

Equally mysterious is the fact that Claudine does not resurface after it becomes obvious that you have befriended Torrijos and neglected your role as EHM.

Would you provide the missing detail in your blog, or perhaps explain why you cannot?

Here is my response:

I cannot answer for Claudine. I wish I could, but I never was hired to bring an EHM in the way she was. What I do know is that 1970 was a time of transition -- we were preparing to move from the Vietnam era of open conflict with Communist countries into greater reliance on EHM and their more subtle approaches. I presume that I was seen as an experiment in this process and that it became obvious after my successes that people like me could perpetuate the system through using a "carrot and stick" approach (getting our employees to do what we wanted through bonuses, promotions, firings, etc.).   

Tony, thanks for asking the question!

John Perkins

author, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Learn more at the John Perkins COLLECTION at the Global Dialogue Center at www.globaldialoguecenter.com/johnperkins

Comments

[Michelle Wilson]

I learned of this book as I happened upon CSPANS book TV. A channel which I do not watch and did not seek out. I was flipping through the channels and I caught a few words about the book when I was instantly captivated. You were speaking about things that I have been saying for much of my life. I am Native American and with that comes a duty to family, culure and the earth. I remained relatively sheltered in my Maine environment for most of my life. It was not until I came to long Island New York that I saw a true level of greed. Not only corporate greed, but personal greed. Everyone acting as if they are in a personal bubble with no thought of those outside it. They water their lawns with no thought of where the water comes from or where it is going. They produce more and more garbage in their conviently packaged lives. They tear down still usable buildings only to build newer ones, without regard to the hours of labor and craftmenship that went into them. They take from each other and from the earth with no thought of giving back. Everyone is purely concerned with thier own level of pleasure and comfort without regard to the suffering they cause globally. They import goods, and export imorality. Thank you for writing this book and I look forward to reading it.

[John Perkins]

Michelle,
Thank you for writing to share your experience and for your encouragement. I do believe this is a year of great change and it will happen because of people like you willing to rethink and speak-up.

John