Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm Ashton Ratansi and welcome back to Going Underground. Broadcasting all around the world from the UAE. Amidst ongoing genocide in Gaza, NATO's war on Russia and Ukraine, uprisings across Western Europe and the US Israeli war on Iran. Here in West Asia, the IMF and World bank are meeting in Bangkok behind a protest ban. No one is alive allowed to protest outside the meetings of the two institutions linked to so much death and destruction all around the world. Today is suitably the UN's International Day for the eradication of poverty. Poorer nations pay half a trillion dollars a year more to borrow than rich ones. The IMF rewarded genocidal eu, US, UK armed Israel with a GDP estimate upgrade and continues to pour cash to support NATO proxy Ukraine valuing Ukrainians more than 10 times more worthy than Africans for for loans. As for the World bank, former mastercard CEO AJ Banger, he sits on the Gaza Board of Peace. While more than 190 civil society groups oppose World bank links to ongoing genocide. All this from institutions that according to one whistleblower, outsources tools including rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex and murder. John Perkins is a former chief economist at Chastity Maine who advised the IMF and World bank before publishing his best selling trilogy, Confessions of an Economic Hitman. His new book is the Art of the Steel Trump and the Economic Hitman Presidency. He joins me again from Bainbridge island in Washington. John, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Let's just begin before we go to the call to action at the end of the book. Tell me about the Art of the Steel.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Well, I want to make it clear that although Trump is featured in just about every page of the book, it's not a partisan book. You know, the United States has been headed toward this oligarchy and very imperialistic state of being for a long time under both Democrats and Republicans. But Trump has really highlighted this. He's brought it out into the open. We've never had a president that so openly was corrupt and so openly was striking deals that are not good for this country.
And so I wanted to use this time of the Trump presidency as a time to point out that this economic hitman strategy that I helped to develop back in the 70s has now just gone crazy, if you want to call it that. And taking the United States into a position that I could never, never have imagined we would reach. And I was recently in Latin America. I just came back from the Middle East, Asia and Europe.
And it's everywhere. The United States, it's a mystery to everyone. But it's also a laughingstock.
It's a real shame. I'm ashamed to be an American today, quite frankly.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Obviously, it's caused millions to be killed, wounded, or displaced because of the war here in West Asia. But you kind of hint at it in the book. Isn't it good that finally it's out in the open, that these decades of economic hitman strategy by the IMF and World bank and other institutions is now so obviously out in the open? This is what comes from Washington and the Washington Consensus.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Yes, that's my hope.
Well, it is out in the open. The question is, will that cause change? And my hope is that it will. And so I do think that Trump has given us a gift and that he's brought this out into the open.
The things that I did in secret and on a much smaller scale, he's now doing totally publicly and on a very, very large scale. And the country's going along with him to a large degree. And by the country, I don't necessarily mean the people, but the politicians, certainly the Republicans are going along with him. The corporate executives are along with him, the universities, everybody has given in to him. He's used, I talk about the four pillars of the economic hitman strategy, and he's used them all brilliantly. But fear is perhaps the one he's used most brilliantly of all. People are scared of this man, and you can understand why they're scared of him.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: I want to go into those more concretely in a second, but because the IMF and World bank meetings are on this week, you say early on in the book, you talk about gdp, and all over the mass media has been these amazing IMF World bank forecasts of GDP growth, people consulting it and quoting it as if it is the words of God as it assumes oil at $96 a barrel. Why don't you like GDP as an indicator?
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Well, GDP really measures how well the wealthy are doing in their corporations.
It doesn't measure or it doesn't. Isn't. Doesn't significantly measure the majority of people in most countries.
And so you. For many years, I believe that the policies that I was implementing were increasing prosperity for everyone because the statistics show that building these huge infrastructure projects like power plants and industrial parks, highways, ports, airports, increased GDP per capita and per capita. Now, doesn't that mean for everyone per person?
But what it turns out is that of course, GDP per capita is just the amount of GDP divided by the number of people.
And GDP is a measure of how well the big industries are doing the corporations, the banks, the insurance companies, and now the media moguls. How well the rich are doing it is not a measure of overall prosperity. So GDP per capita, GDP and total GDP per capita can be increasing. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor is getting bigger and deeper, and the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer. GDP is really a very, very, very misleading measurement, and I think it's intended to be that way.
Here these people are all meeting these bankers in their fancy ties and coats.
They're coming in on their private planes and they're talking about economic stability and economic growth and financial stability and how do we get rid of poverty. But the very that they're implementing are tending to do exactly the opposite of that, and they must be aware of it. I certainly became aware of it after a while.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Now, interestingly, in the book, you talk about how Trump, before he became a politician, inverted the IMF World bank economic hitman strategy to make the debtor captive to the creditor. So that if you borrow enough, I mean, maybe developing world countries should take note and borrow so much money. I mean, arguably Ukraine already is borrowing so much money that the banks would be captive to Trump while he was running his real estate empire.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: That could work. And Trump certainly was extremely successful at being too big to fail.
So he borrowed so much money from these banks, particularly Deutsche bank and others, that they couldn't allow him to fail because then they would probably go bankrupt, or at least their books would look very, very red and they'd have mud on their face. So this whole idea of, yeah, if you borrow so much that the lender becomes your partner and has to make sure that you don't fail.
Trump learned that very early in his real estate career, and he's been practicing it. And. And as you say, you know, could this serve as an example for countries in Africa, Latin America, and other parts of the world?
It could, I think, but only if they all unite. Because the problem is to a large degree that this pillar of divide and conquer is so strong that if one country, let's say Nigeria, tried to do this, then the pressure would be put on all the corporations working in Nigeria to stop working in Nigeria and move to one of the neighboring countries in Africa that had very similar resources. So the way for it to work would have to be for these, all of these neighboring countries to come together and decide that they're all going to take a similar stand and use the Trump model to be too big to fail.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: I mean, clearly, when you heard of the kidnapping of Maduro and the First Lady, Celia Flores of Venezuela. You probably thought that Trump was using your books as a manual rather than a cautionary tale. But explain to me how the war in Iran is somehow emblematic of the economic hitman strategy.
Wow.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: The war in Iran, I think, is emblematic of a terrible strategic failure on the part of Trump.
So I was very involved in building the military bases along the Strait of Hormuz in Iran under the Shah's petrodollars, paid American corporations to go in and build these vast military bases in Bandar Abbas and elsewhere along the Strait of Hormuz. And I was there a lot in this process.
We knew at that time, and for the next 50 years, the CIA, the Pentagon, presumably the White House, has known that whoever controls Australia of Hormuz, controls global oil to a very large degree and therefore global economies to a very large degree. And it's pretty obvious that when the Iranians take ownership of those military bases that we built so that America could control the stray of Hormuz, when Iran has control of those and you go out and take out the Supreme Leader, why would you not realize that Iran is going to use the leverage that it has?
And it's a mystery to me that this country made such an incredible strategic mistake.
The only answer I can come up with, and I've asked this a lot, is Trump was on a high, an adrenaline rush after his success in Venezuela. And so he thought, well, I can do the same thing in Iran.
What he didn't take into account was that Venezuela didn't have leverage. It doesn't control the oil flow through the Caribbean or the Panama Canal or anything.
Iran has tremendous leverage by having that control over the Strait of Hormuz, control that we gave them by building those military bases for Iran.
So it's a really deep strategic mistake and it may be Trump's downfall ultimately, because this war with Iran is certainly not popular in the United States. And what's going on throughout the entire world, including where you're located, is having a huge, is being hugely impacted by this war with attacks on Saudi Arabia, with disturbances to economies around the world, tourism, just everything is falling apart.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: I mean, Tucker Carson was on this show and expressed similar feelings about it being mysterious.
And he, and he spoke to Trump and warned him not to conduct this war on Iran. But could it be that this is an economic hitman strategy in that he wanted Iran to control the oil or parts of the oil industry, and profits have been massively spiking for the biggest oil major companies since the war began, of course, his trust funds and there are lots of share ownership on that. Could it be that he wants the oil price to go up, forget the midterms, as people often have said, given it's his last term.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Well, that's a very cynical point of view. How could you possibly suspect the president of the United States of being so selfish?
[00:12:19] Speaker B: It's coming from your, coming from how terrible the things that you've described in your long career advising top Washington institutions.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Well, and, and I, and I'm, I understand that Tucker Carlson gets almost all of his information from my books and my website.
I don't know whether that's true or not, but there's a rumor out there, you know, and in any case, yes, that's possible.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: But it can't just be mysterious to you. It can't be mysterious to you who've seen it from the inside how dirty the IMF and World bank, let alone how big oil majors act with such ruthlessness across the global south.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Yes, but if, if you were looking at this in any sort of a rational way, and I'm not sure that Trump does look at things in a rational way, but if, if you were, you would see that the ultimate consequences of the attack on Iran are incredibly detrimental to the United States and to the global economy. And yes, oil prices may go up in the short term, but in the long term, this is going to have a very negative impact and it gives Iran a lot more power than it had before all of this happened.
And I'd also point out that all of this plays into the hands of China.
So if you're Xi Jinping, you're sitting back there with a big grin on your face like, oh, keep it up, Mr. President of the United they keep, keep, keep doing these dumb things because China staying out of the fray.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: John Perkins, I'll stop you there. More from the bestselling author of the Art of the Steel after this break.
Welcome back to Going Underground. I'm still here with the bestselling author whose new book is the Art of the Steel, Trump and the Economic Hitman Presidency.
John, we were talking about whether it might be a reason for Trump to have engaged in this war, to have increased the profits of the big oil majors. In fairness, in your book, you talk about the war in Europe obliquely.
Trump did want to try and stop the war in Europe, tried to speak to Putin and so forth.
Do you think there are forces behind him that want that war to keep going, to have a full defeat of Russia Rather than there be a peace agreement, as people often say, fight to the last Ukrainian as a proxy war.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Certainly that's another very cynical point of view. And these are times when cynicism is well justified.
I think that's a possibility. It's very, very difficult to understand Trump's relationship with Putin.
It's extremely difficult.
The whole Republican.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Isn't it easy to understand they both have the biggest number of nuclear weapons in the world and he doesn't want a nuclear war.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Yes, but at the same time, it's playing into the hands of China, which is the country that they both fear from an economic standpoint and a militaristic standpoint, too.
And that may be one reason for him to be aligning with Russia is to feel that perhaps there's a new axis emerging.
But there's such a long history in the United States, including and especially amongst the Republican Party members of opposition to Russia, that this is a.
It would be a huge deviation from any policies that we've had in the past.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: But it's the Democrats. Democrats are the ones that forged the war, clearly. And I should just say Russia and China, of course, have this strategic alliance beyond all limits. Having said that, she was in Washington, D.C. only recently.
But no, if the Democrats win in the midterms, presumably there's going to be a upping of the war on Russia through Ukraine.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Well, I think that's true, yes.
But traditionally, the Republicans have been the strong anti Communist, anti Soviet Union, anti Russia party, and that's changed radically during. During Trump's administration.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: I mean, you talk in the book a lot about fear.
Any countries, do you think, in Bangkok, their representatives stupid enough to take out more loans from the IMF and World bank and sacrifice sovereignty? Presumably those representatives wouldn't have read your work before they do. So what do you think would have gone on at the meetings, beyond the platitudes that we see publicly at these meetings in Bangkok? You obviously weren't invited.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: How do you know I wasn't invited? I didn't go there. I wasn't invited.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Were you? I don't think you would be. They're not allowing. Why do you think they didn't allow protests, by the way? I bet some of the protesters were holding your book.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah, they're out there waving around that book. Incidentally, I just came from Istanbul, where the book is already very popular in Turkish, and the name of the book there, they've changed the name is just plain Trump Trump, which is kind of cool. Anyway, you have to distinguish between what's good for a country and what's good for a country's leaders.
So as to whether some of the leaders of these countries are taking on these huge loans, I have no doubt that they are. And even if they know that it's bad for their countries, the majority of the people in their countries, it's good for them because they own the big businesses, they profit from these loans. So I think that will continue as long as we have systems where leaders have so much power to do these things things and can gain so much from them. And let's face it, Trump has served as an amazing model of how to use corruption to increase his fortunes and his family's fortunes. And leaders around the world are looking at that and saying, well, heck, if the president of the United States can do this, I can certainly do this. So I wouldn't be a bit surprised. But what many of these leaders from other countries are very eager to accept loans while they know that ultimately, while they may have read my books and know ultimately these loans are not going to serve the best interests of their people, they do know that they may serve the best interests of them and their families and their friends and cronies.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: And just remind us, though, that obviously they, quite a few of them are often, well, basically blackmailed.
The bars in Bangkok's hotels over the past week, if they were anything like the bars described in your books, there will have been shady deals being done involving extortion and all manner of threats, the basing of US Military installations and so forth.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Sex. Yeah, I mean, you know, Bangkok's famous for that, too. Yes, undoubtedly there's these, all of these things going on behind the scenes. So once again, throughout history, we have to look at the difference between what's best for our country and what's best for the individual. So who have a great power over the policies of any particular country.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: And the Iran war also has another side effect, which is the bases located in this region.
They were only placed here as a protection against, well, I think it was Iraq at the time, during Gulf War one. But that strategy may not work now that Trump has gone and Netanyahu have gone into Iran this time. In fact, it's been said that Israel's aim was to get rid of the US Bases in this region to help Israel and make Israel supreme in this region.
Explain to me the dynamic that's going to be affected by the war in Iran there as regards US Bases remains to be seen.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: But it certainly looks as though Iran gets stronger and stronger, the US Gets weaker and weaker. And it's not just there. And in those basis, I think one of the things that comes out of the Trump administration is a future where people will not take the United States nearly as seriously as they have in the past and certainly won't trust us.
We've proven that one president can negate very important deals that were made by previous administrations and sometimes even by his own at a previous time.
We've certainly seen that happen with the Iran nuclear agreement, where we had a nuclear agreement in place. Whether you think it was a good one or not, it was one that was working quite well. The International Atomic Energy Agency is a very reputable agency.
He nixed that deal, and now he's trying to get another deal that would be similar to that. Probably not as good as that.
So in that process, what does the United States look like? A country that just can't strike deals and keep them over and over and over, whether it's the Paris Peace Accord or so many different situations. And we've certainly, under Trump, NATO has been weakened, at least as far as the US As a member is concerned. NATO maybe is trauma may emerge more strongly out of this than it has before because it may have learned that can't rely on the United States unless it's destroyed by Russia.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Unless it be destroyed by Russia, of course. But the iaea, I should say Rafael Grossi has been associated with Israel, actually, and lots of criticism of the IAEA. Today is actually 53 years since King Faisal and OPEC embargoed oil. Kashkin wants OPEC to unite. I mean, there could be this dislocation in Iranian governance, of course, amidst the war. Hopelessly naive of Iran. I know you say Iran are emerging stronger, but naive of him to call on OPEC to be a force here. You, of course, helped to destroy OPEC's power.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Yeah, well, certainly. I think Iran and many of the OPEC countries would like to see a new, powerful OPEC emerge out of all of this. And will that happen? I don't know. I think once again, we have to look to China and what role will China play in all of this? As Xi Jinping has been playing his cards very close to the vest, we don't know what he's thinking or doing particularly. And that's, that's part of his style. He's sitting on the sidelines.
He's making the United States, he's letting the United States make huge mistakes.
And meanwhile, he's just kind of riding on the wave of it all.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Well, having said that, Russia And China are well in there supporting Iran in all manner of ways. In fact, some are saying that of course Iranian diesel is being mixed in with Russian to supply the global demand after sanctions were waived by Trump this, this week. But I, we haven't got time to go into how you help to destroy opec.
Surely OPEC isn't going to get stronger. The UAE just left it and it's been hopelessly destabilized from within, I think. Is your been your in your writings over the years?
[00:23:52] Speaker A: Yeah, well, not only that, but there can be no doubt that oil is on a decline. You know, I mean we know that fossil fuels just can't keep rising in their use. So yeah, the whole oil industry is, is, is going to go into a decline at some point and it is in a decline now except for very temporary, short, a very temporary interim of time when it looks like well, they have prices are going up and why are prices going up? Why are prices going down? They're very, very, very short term policies that are driving this. In the long run we know we've got to get off fossil fuels and everybody's working hard on that. China working harder than anybody else and very successfully. So yes, in the long run, oil is doomed. So the OPEC countries now have to look at what's the alternative?
How do we fit into the future picture and the future global politics?
That's a big question for them to have to look at. And can they look at it together? Can they join hands and come through this? Because ultimately I think the most powerful force in the world is union being united. And we in the United States, back when we became a country to begin with, there were 13 colonies that were at each other's throats. Most of them didn't like each other. And certainly the north and the south had huge disagreements. But within those spheres there were also tremendous disagreements. But finally they agreed to come together to confront a common enemy which they saw as the British monarchy. And that changed everything.
And colonial powers like Europe in the Middle east and Africa and Spain and Portugal and the United States and Latin America have always known that the way to keep power is to divide people. Divide and conquer. Because united people have power divided, it dissipates.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Which leads me neatly into finally just to ask you about the last chapter of the Arts of the Steel. I should just say Venezuela, probably not very permissible within any new opec. Now it's a vassal state of the United States. Tell me about the call to action and how that fits in with the reaction, the economic Hitman will the reaction that will be catalyzed by perhaps defeat of economic hitman. How can the call, your call to action, match the level of scale of violence that economic hitmen have in store?
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Well, I think that's. And that's the most important part of this, this new book, the Art of the Steel, is that each and every one of us has a role to play. I think we should feel blessed that we're alive right now, each of us, because we are at a time in history like no other. We're at a time when human beings have the power to destroy life on this planet as we know it. And so many opportunities to do that, whether it's nuclear holocaust or destroying the environment and climate change, whatever, we are at this cusp, we're at this inflection point, and we as individuals have a role to play. And I outline in the book how each individual, whether you're a show, a host like you, a writer like me, a plumber, a carpenter, a parent, a student, each one of those can really look at what is it that I most want to do for the rest of my life and I have the best skills at doing, and how can I do this in a way that'll help create a world that future generations will want to inherit it? And that's a very, I'm giving a very generalized view, but the book dives into questions that each of us can ask ourselves that will guide us along this, this journey.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Joan Perkins, thank you.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: My pleasure. And it's always my pleasure to be on this show. It's a great show. And just please keep doing what you're doing because it's so important to get this information and message out to the world. Thank you.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Thanks, John. And the Art of the Steel, Trump and the Economic Hitman Presidency is out now. Our condolences to all those of you who have been a affected by IMF and World bank neoliberal policies. We'll be back on Monday with a former Obama advisor who says we're on the edge now of nuclear war. Until then, you can keep in touch via all our social media if it's not censored your country. And head to our channel going underground TV on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See you Monday.
