>>Nostalgia For Infinity

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Although it was originally released in 2004, and I bought it in 2005, it was only this year that I finally read this book – which courted some controversy when it originally shot up the bestseller lists. The short summary is that this purports to be an autobiography which focuses on some of the most significant events of the author’s life in relation to US foreign and economic policy. In Perkins’ college years he was put under observation by the NSA, who felt that he fit the psychological profile of an economic hitman, EHM for short; a combination of intelligence, patriotism and manipulable weakness. He joined the peace corps for a spell in South America after which he was recruited by an organisation known as MAIN, a US engineering and consultancy firm which specialised in overseas contracts for states the NSA wanted to bind together with the USA in a mutually beneficial economic arrangement. This meant that these nations would either accept development loans from the IMF and World Bank or utilise their own wealth, which funds would then be funnelled into US corporations who would modernise private and public infrastructure in the client states.

The general facts of these relationships are not particularly controversial these days; it’s common knowledge that the IMF and the World Bank are institutions in which the USA has a lot of power, and that states which accept development funds are obliged to adopt certain neoliberal doctrines (primarily privatising state assets and infrastructure and opening them up to bids from international, often US, corporations). It’s also common knowledge that this process of ‘modernisation’ often does as much bad as it does good. Where natural resources are opened up to exploitation indigenous peoples see their lifestyles destroyed; where hydroelectric dams are constructed tens or even hundreds of thousands of people find themselves forcibly relocated. Serious health risks can arise as a result of pollutants or disease; funds often find themselves funnelled into the pockets or pet projects of elites in client states at the expense of those who are worst off.

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