I have been reading these two books.
The first, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is the personal narrative of an economic consultant who was in charge of forecasting the growth of a developing nation's GNP after receipt of international aid loans. He states his purpose was to get these countries to take on huge amounts of loans by over-inflating the GNP forecast, then taking action to bankrupt these countries so that they essentially became slaves to US corporate interests. The book then discusses his personal soul searching as he leaves the business.
As an economist, I don't know how I feel about this. First, he technically isn't an economist; he never earned a Ph.D.* But, he definitely has the experience in doing what he did, and probably did it very well. Second, he tries to demonstrate the failures of economic thought by showing that very few people benefited from the international aid, while the rest of the country suffered. The reason why economic thought failed, in my opinion, is that the very contracts his company set up were corrupted from the begining, designed to enrich a few people while enslaving the rest of the counrty. So, of course that will be the outcome when it's designed to be so. He does provide one counter example of a politician who would not be corrupted; where the aid actually helped the country. That president was soon assassinated.
The tone of the book is pretty dull, and I had a hard time reading it. It's dripping with remorse, which is a good thing. But, as the phrase goes, hindsight is 20/20. I have a hard time believing the regret he showed at the beginning of his career.
The other book is Lone Survivor. It's the story of Marcus Luttrell, a navy SEAL, and one of his missions in Afganistan. His SEAL team of four was ambushed by Taliban fighters, and he was the lone survivor of his team. He was taken in by a Pashtun village and nursed back to health. Eventually, Luttrell was rescued by Army Rangers.
The story was great. The detailed description of Navy SEAL training was very vivid. It made my joints hurt. However, once he finished SEAL school and got into combat operations, the language in the book fell apart. That really turned me off on the book. However, the book did raise some interesting questions, some that have some game-theoritic implications. Given a set of combat rules, what is the best response of one fighting group when the other breaks the rules? Should there be some sort of trigger-strategy?** In fact, Luttrell discusses rules of engagement quite a bit. The political classification of the military actions regarding the "war" on terror puts the armed forces in difficult positions. They may not be able to engage the enemy until they have lost every advantage to do so, or until they are at considerable risk to engage. The days are gone when the opposing forces are easy to identify, which makes fighting all the more difficult. Anyways, if you want your visual ears assaulted, go get it from the library.
*Scott, this one is for you; even though you are more of an economist than me.
*Sorry, had to throw in some game theory/ army humor in there.
3 comments:
I felt the same way about Confessions of an Economic Hitman in that I didn't really believe that he felt completely remorseful about his role in the destruction of civilizations. His tone was almost arrogant in some parts.
I haven't read the other book, but we just read Three Cups of Tea for book group and it was fabulous. It helped wipe away the yucky feeling from the Perkins book and I learned more about Afghanistan and Pakistan along the journey.
Just had to come out of lurking to comment since I've also read 'Confessions'. In fact, the author came here to the business school last semester for a presentation shortly after I had read the book.
This was one of those books that after a while, I just wanted to finish it to say that I had read it. He makes his point in 10% of the book, and uses the other 90% to tell fabulous stories of his escapades and the resulting guilt.
I don't really doubt anything he writes, but definitely take it with a grain of salt. I've found that people can live through the same experiences and circumstances and yet have differing memories and interpretations. Oh, and you are spot on about corrupt contracts yielding corrupt results.
Pffffffffffft.
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