Controversy
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| "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins |
John Perkins defines economic hit men as "Highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.” He claims they funnel money from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and other foreign 'aid' organizations. This just so happens to be the big hidden pockets of huge corporations/conglomerates, which in turn are just the pockets of a few wealthy families who control most of the planet's resources. These loaded families include "big wigs" within Chas. T. Main, Inc., Halliburton, and even the U.S. government's organizations. Their schemes include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs(bribes), extortion, sex, and murder. As John Perkins says "They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization."
In John Perkins’ autobiography, he reveals his career as an economist for an international consulting firm. Perkins says he was actually an "Economic Hitman" and that his job was to convince countries to accept complex schemes that are strategically important to the United States. His work consisted of glorifying future economic growth projections to government officials around the world to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development, and to make sure that the lucrative projects were contracted by specific U.S. corporations. He explains how he created projections for countries to accept billions of dollars in loans they surely couldn't afford, forcing these victimized populations as stakeholders into a realm of slavery. He shares his battle with his conscience over the ethics of these actions and offers advice for how Americans can work to end these practices, which he feels have directly resulted in terrorist attacks and animosity towards United States government and it's people.
Karen Hudes of the World Bank is considered to be another highly credited whistle blower as John Perkins is. Hudes held the position of Senior Counsel within the World Bank, therefore giving her the chance to see exactly how the global elite rule the world, and the information that she is now revealing to the public is ever so connecting the growing pile of evidence against these criminal conglomerations. According to Hudes, the elite use a very tight core of financial institutions and mega-corporations to dominate the planet, claiming the main goal is control. “They want all of us enslaved to debt, they want all of our governments enslaved to debt, and they want all of our politicians addicted to the huge financial contributions that they funnel into their campaigns.” Since the elite also own all of the big media companies, the mainstream media never lets us in on the secret that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that our system works.
Individualism
Individualist theory considers a business's primary goal to create maximum profit for its stockholders and/or employees. Yet this is only applicable as long as the company respects the laws of the land, and the rights of the people whom are affected by the overall business actions of the company. The “Economic Hit Men's” (EHM’s) job entail them to falsely justify huge loans for countries, typically poor, or simply just strategically useful for the U.S. government. The fraudulent financial reporting done by these EHM’s to convince countries to take out absurd loans that are considered highly unethical and sometimes illegal. Furthermore in response, the EHMs do not actually work directly for any U.S. government organizations in particular, i.e the NSA or even CIA.The risk with such a direct association is obvious, which is why the U.S. government outsourced their unethical acts to these interconnected conglomerates. These loans generally only benefited engineering and construction projects that were typically carried out by international consulting firm of Chas. T. Main, Inc. (MAIN), and other stakeholders and U.S. companies such as Bechtel, Stone & Webster, Brown & Root, and Halliburton. As a result, bankrupting these countries that received these loans after the U.S. companies involved had been paid. In return, this would put these countries in debt to their creditors for a very long time.
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| "World Bank Whistle blower" Karen Hudes |
Kantianism
Kantianism states that businesses, or in this case corporations, should always work within the rules, and to never consider themselves exempt from said laws either. In addition the conglomerates are required to help consumers make well informed choices for the good of everyone. In this intrinsic value system it is instilled to allow the people to make rational, autonomous decisions which is the overall foundation for this theory. Yet these EHM's trick these countries into assuming it's their own choice, but this false autonomy is actually not nearly in their control at all. Both Hudes & Perkins would agree that these U.S. companies or even the U.S. government's organizations then target these countries into a form of extortion. Forcing these countries into doing “favors” such as, UN votes, setting up Military bases, and even access to their natural resources like oil.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism states that any action that tries to make everyone happy is ethical, therefore happiness is the most valuable ideal in regards to the theory of Utilitarianism. Countries like Indonesia and Panama, are being buried by these conglomerates with un-payable debt. The results of these transactions go against the overall theory of utilitarianism, depriving it’s citizens of health, education, and other social services. Services that we have taken for granted for several decades as these countries struggle economically to overcome their huge debts, resulting in unhappiness throughout the population for decades as well, therefore violating the ideals of Utilitarianism.
Virtue Theory
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| John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man |
The virtue theory emphasizes the role of one's character in addition to the virtues that one's character embodies for evaluating ethical behavior. When considering EHM's original intentions, their actions reflect an exemplary stand on virtue theory. As EHMs learned throughout their journeys, they realized that they were actually being highly un-honest to not only the exploited governing bodies of these countries, but to the entire population too. The EHM's lack of self-control resulted in unbalance of capital within these already struggling economies into economical prisoners to the criminal conglomerates. The EHM's who did eventually step up and became a whistle blower do show a form of courage, yet the level of glorified temperance they illegally instilled upon these countries into debt reinstates their absurd violation of the virtue theory.
ConclusionAlthough the entire debacle synthesized by these conglomerates formulates a sense of global capitalism, it is a more specific kind of capitalism that the U.S. has developed, which is a mutant, viral form of capitalism. This mutant form of capitalism is more like nature's model of predator and prey, that has created an extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust and very dangerous world. John Perkins has interviewed many terrorists, whether it be for any of his books, or simply to reinstate his theory that no terrorist truly ever wanted to be a terrorist. He claims they are forced to be these desperate people who inevitably don’t have much of a choice not to be a terrorist due to all these countries and it's people being taken advantage off. If we want to get rid of terrorism we must get rid of the root cause of all of this. It’s this cancer of evil global capitalism that is destroying our whole system, whether it’s economics or simply ethics. It’s really important that we understand that in order to have homeland security, we need to understand that the entire planet is our home.
References
Coghlan, Andy, and Debora MacKanzie. "Revealed - The Capitalist Network That Runs The World." NewScientist. Reed Business Information Ltd., 4 July 2011. Web. 24 Oct. 2011.<http://www.newscientist.com/article mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html#.Ud5_NvmL3nj>.
Goodman, Alana. "IMF Whistleblower Banned from World Bank." The Washington Free Beacon [Washington] 7 Nov. 2013, Issues: n. pag. Print.
Highan, Scott. "SEC has opened investigation into KBR, whistleblower’s lawyer says." The Washington Post. The Washington Post, 10 Mar. 2014. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/
sec-has-opened-investigation-into-kbr-whistleblowers-lawyer-says/2014/03/10/d09ed14e-a883-11e3-8d62-419db477a0e6_story.html>.
Perkins, John. Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man. Vol. I. San Fransisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 2004. Print. New York Times Best Seller
Snyder, Micheal T. "World Bank Whistleblowers Karen Hudes Reveals How The Global Elite Rule The
World." The Economic Collapse Blog. Micheal T. Snyder, 30 Sept. 2013. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. <http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/world-bank-whistleblower-karen-hudes-reveals-how-the-global-elite-rule-the-world>.
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