The book is a memoir of John Perkins who worked as an economic hitman.

Companies in developed nations target resource-rich poor nations with potential infrastructure projects. The projections of economic growth via such infrastructure growth are lofty. Those lofty projections are used to get funds from organizations like World Bank and US AID. Eventually, the economic growth falls short and then the poor country is left even more debt-laden. Forcing it to sell its natural resources. Now, the job of the economic hitman is complete.

If the poor country refuses such overtures. Then the “jackals” are sent, whose job is to kill the opponents to the deal. And if they fail the job then the coup route is usually taken.

Ecuador, where John Perkins went, for economic analysis, is the example of the first scenario where the government was left debt-laden.

In 1953, in Iran, the US did a coup d’état to overturn the democratically elected Mosaddegh. Saudi Arabia’s King to avoid this fate ended up becoming a US ally which led to the creation of the petro-dollar.

In 1989, in Panama, the US bombed civilians with the main goal of removing their leader Noriega. Libya’s Gadafi met a similar fate.

In 1981, a group of mercenaries heading to coup the Seychelles government were almost caught, they hijacked Air India 707 instead to run away. However, they were caught and leader Peter Duffy spent 21 months in prison in South Africa. His memoir was later published in a book, and he died right before the book launch.

The interesting part is that right from those working in NGO do-gooders, to big companies, to the CIA, no one starts with such nefarious goals. However, the system eventually leads to these outcomes.