A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (AGENCY/DISTRIBUTED) - Hardcover

Steven Hiatt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1576753956 ISBN 13: 9781576753958

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007

Synopsis

John Perkins's sensational New York Times bestseller Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (more than 300,000 sold) revealed just the tip of the iceberg of the secret world of economic hit men and the web of global corruption. Now more economic hit men and investigators tell the whole shocking story.

About this title

About the Author:

Steven Hiatt is an editor and writer who has worked for Apple Computer and Stanford Research Institute. He is the editor (with Mike Davis) of Fire in the Hearth: The Radical Politics of Place in America and is president of Editcetera, a cooperative of publishing professionals.
Ellen Augustine's passion to create a just, peaceful, and sustainable world has led her to run for U.S. Congress and found/cofound four nonprofits focusing on media violence, mentoring at-risk youth, citizen diplomacy, and environmental restoration. She co-authored (as Ellen Schwartz) Taking Back Our Lives in the Age of Corporate Dominance from an optimism that simultaneously recognizes the urgency of our times and the power of intention and conscious action. She currently speaks on "Stories of Hope" profiles of people who are creating businesses that increase profits by being eco-friendly, communi- ties and schools that nurture and sustain us, and initiatives that revitalize our environment (www.storiesof hope.us). She has been a voice for the common good--balancing the present and future needs of people and the planet in all decisions--on numerous radio and television shows, and in magazines such as Utne Reader. She has served on several nonprofit boards, including the National Women's Political Caucus and the Sierra Club.
Following a varied career in industry and technical education, Steve Berkman joined the World Bank's Africa Region Group in 1983. Hired to provide advice and assistance on capacity-building components for Bank-funded projects, he worked in twenty-one countries. Within a few years, he realized that the Bank's approach to economic development was a failure, but his attempts to convince management of the extent of the problem went unheeded until the arrival of President James Wolfensohn in 1995. Retiring in that same year, he was called back to the Bank from 1998 to 2002 to help establish the Anti- Corruption and Fraud Investigation Unit and was a lead investigator on a number of cases. Since 2002 he has provided assistance to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on legislation calling for reform of the multilateral development banks and Senate consideration of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. He is currently finishing a manuscript on the World Bank that provides an inside look at the Bank's management, its lending operations, and the theft of billions of dollars from its lending portfolio. He lives in Leesburg, Virginia.
The English novelist Somerset Maugham famously described Monaco, the Mediterranean tax haven, as a "sunny place for shady people." In the mid- 1980s, economist John Christensen returned to Jersey, a not-so-sunny place for shady people in the English Channel, to investigate how these offshore tax havens work. During the boom years of financial deregulation he worked as a trust and company administrator and as economic adviser to the island's government. Though committed to principles of fair trade and social justice, he became involved in a globalized offshore financial industry that facilitates capital flight, tax evasion, and money laundering. In 1998 he resigned from his post on Jersey, moved with his family to the UK, and became a founder member of a campaign to highlight how tax havens cause poverty. He currently directs the International Secretariat of the Tax Justice Network (www. taxjustice.net).
S.C. Gwynne is executive editor of Texas Monthly, having previously been a correspondent for Time magazine. After receiving a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1977, he was awarded a teaching fellowship in the writing seminars program under novelist John Barth at Johns Hopkins. But his writing career bracketed a five-year career managing international loan portfolios in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, first for Cleveland Trust and later in

Synopsis:

"A Game As Old As Empire" exposes many more shocking secrets of a worldwide web of control, corruption, and plunder. It tells how multinational corporations, governments, powerful individuals, banks, other financial institutions, and quasi-governmental agencies operate to enrich small elite and corporate coffers while often impoverishing masses of people and creating debt and dependency that economically enslave countries for generations. This new book provides the first full inside look at how this dark and dirty world functions. It shows that the economic hit man game and the web of global corruption are far more widespread, pervasive, and destructive than Perkins described in Confessions.And, it reveals the deep and dark connections between this economic hit man game and the domination of global empire. Each chapter focuses on a particular case, detailing the methods used to deceive, steal, corrupt, and enforce compliance.

These methods range from the clearly sinister (such as bribery, fraud, looting, money laundering, threats, and even the use of "jackals" and other means of violence) to the seemingly altruistic (such as many types of debt relief, development assistance, and foreign aid) that in fact are highly exploitative and onerous.

About this edition

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1576753956
• ISBN 13: 9781576753958
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 310
• Editor: Steven Hiatt