They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater domination, and then they themselves fall. No country or com-bination of countries can thrive in the long term by exploiting others. This book was written so that we may take heed and remold our story. I am certain that when enough of us become aware of how we are being exploited by the economic engine that creates an insatiable appetite for the world's resources, and results in systems that foster slavery, we will no longer tolerate it.
We will reassess our role in a world where a few swim in riches and the majority drown in poverty, pollution, and violence. We will commit ourselves to navigating a xii Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Preface xiii course toward compassion, democracy, and social justice for all. Admitting to a problem is the first step toward finding a solution. Confessing a sin is the beginning of redemption. Let this book, then, be the start of our salvation.
Let it inspire us to new levels of dedi-cation and drive us to realize our dream of balanced and honorable societies. Without the many people whose lives I shared and who are de-scribed in the following pages, this book would not have been written. I am grateful for the experiences and the lessons. I am grateful to the many men and women who provided per-sonal insights and information about the multinational banks, international corporations, and political innuendos of various coun-tries, with special thanks to Michael Ben-Eli, Sabrina Bologni, Juan Gabriel Carrasco, Jamie Grant, Paul Shaw, and several others, who wish to remain anonymous but who know who you are.
Once the manuscript was written, Berrett-Koehler founder Steven Piersanti not only had the courage to take me in but also devoted endless hours as a brilliant editor, helping me to frame and reframe the book. My deepest thanks go to Steven, to Richard Perl, who in-troduced me to him, and also to Nova Brown, Randi Fiat, Allen Jones, Chris Lee, Jennifer Liss, Laurie Pellouchoud, and Jenny Williams, who read and critiqued the manuscript; to David Korten, who not only read and critiqued it but also made me jump through hoops to satisfy his high and excellent standards; to Paul Fedorko, my agent; to Valerie Brewster for crafting the book design; and to Todd Manza, my copy editor, a wordsmith and philosopher extraordinaire.
I must thank all those men and women who worked with me at MAIN and were unaware of the roles they played in helping EHM shape the global empire; I especially thank the ones who worked for me and with whom I traveled to distant lands and shared so many precious moments. Also Ehud Sperling and his staff at Inner Tradi-tions International, publisher of my earlier books on indigenous cul-tures and shamanism, and good friends who set me on this path as an author.
I am eternally grateful to the men and women who took me into their homes in the jungles, deserts, and mountains, in the cardboard shacks along the canals of Jakarta, and in the slums of countless cities araund the world, who shared their food and their lives with me and who have been my greatest source of inspiration.
Residents of this city, which was founded long before Columbus arrived in the Americas, are accustomed to seeing snow on the surrounding peaks, despite the fact that they live just a tew miles south of the equator.
The city of Shell, a frontier outpost and military base hacked out of Ecuador's Amazon jungle to service the oil company whose name it bears, is nearly eight thousand feet lower than Quito. To journey from one city to the other, you must travel a road that is both tortuous and breathtaking. Local people will tell you that during the trip you experience all four seasons in a single day. Although I have driven this road many times, I never tire of the spectacular scenery. Sheer cliff's, punctuated by cascading waterfalls and brilliant bromeliads, rise up one side.
On the other side, the earth drops abruptly into a deep abyss where the Pastaza River, a head-water of the Amazon, snakes its way down the Andes. The Pastaza carries water from the glaciers of Cotopaxi, one of the world s highest active volcanoes and a deity in the time of the Incas, to the Atlantic Ocean over three thousand miles away. In ,1 departed Quito in a Subaru Outback and headed for Shell on a mission that was like no other I had ever accepted.
I was hoping to end a war I had helped create. As is the case with so many things we EHMs must take responsibility for, it is a war that is vir-tually unknown anywhere outside the country where it is fought. I was on my way to meet with the Shuars, the Kichwas, and their neighbors the Achuars, the Zaparos, and the Shiwiars — tribes de-termined to prevent our oil companies from destroying their homes, families, and lands, even if it means they must die in the process.
For them, this is a war about the survival of their children and cultures, while for us it is about power, money, and natural resources. It is one part of the struggle for world domination and the dream of a few greedy men, global empire.
We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations sub-servient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop in-frastructure — electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects.
In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco. Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy the credi-tor , the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest.
If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global empire.
Driving from Quito toward Shell on this sunny day in , I thought back thirty-five years to the first time I arrived in this part of the world. I had read that although Ecuador is only about the size of Nevada, it has more than thirty active volcanoes, over 15 percent of the world's bird species, and thousands of as-yet-unclassified plants, and that it is a land of diverse cultures where nearly as many people speak ancient indigenous languages as speak Spanish.
I found it fascinating and certainly exotic; yet, the words that kept coming to mind back then were pure, untouched, and innocent.
Much has changed in thirty-five years. At the time of my first visit in , Texaco had only just discov-ered petroleum in Ecuador's Amazon region. Today, oil accounts for nearly half the country's exports. During this same period, the indigenous cultures began fighting back. The suit asserts that between and the oil giant dumped into open holes and rivers over four million gallons per day of toxic wastewater contaminated with oil, heavy metals, and carcinogens, and that the company left behind nearly uncovered waste pits that continue to kill both people and animals.
Sweat soaked my shirt, and my stomach began to churn, but not just from the intense trop-ical heat and the serpentine twists in the road. Knowing the part I had played in destroying this beautiful country was once again taking its toll. Because of my fellow EHMs and me, Ecuador is in far worse shape today than she was before we introduced her to the miracles of modern economics, banking, and engineering.
Meanwhile, the share of national resources allocated to the poorest segments of the population declined from 20 to 6 percent. Nearly every country we EHMs have brought under the global empire's umbrella has suf-fered a similar fate. Over half the people in the world survive on less than two dollars per day, which is roughly the same amount they received in the early s.
Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of third world households accounts for 70 to 90 percent of all private financial wealth and real estate ownership in their country; the actual per-centage depends on the specific country. Children ran along beside us, waving and trying to sell us gum and cookies. Then we left Banos behind. The spectacu-lar scenery ended abruptly as the Subaru sped out of paradise and into a modern vision of Dante's Inferno. A gigantic monster reared up from the river, a mammoth gray wall.
Its dripping concrete was totally out of place, completely un-natural and incompatible with the landscape. Of course, seeing it there stlould not have surprised me. I knew all along that it would be waiting in ambush. I had encountered it many times before and in the past had praised it as a symbol of EHM accomplishments. Even so, it made my skin crawl. That hideous, incongruous wall is a dam that blocks the rushing Pastaza River, diverts its waters through huge tunnels bored into the mountain, and converts the energy to electricity.
This is the megawatt Agoyan hydroelectric project. It fuels the industries that make a handful of Ecuadorian families wealthy, and it has been the source of untold suffering for the farmers and indigenous people who live along the river. This hydroelectric plant is just one of many projects developed through my efforts and those of other EHMs. Such projects are the reason Ecuador is now a member of the global empire, and the reason why the Shuars and Kichwas and their neighbors threaten war against our oil companies.
Because of EHM projects, Ecuador is awash in foreign debt and must devote an inordinate share of its national budget to paying this off, instead of using its capital to help the millions of its citizens officially classified as dangerously impoverished.
The only way Ecua-dor can buy down its foreign obligations is by selling its rain forests to the oil companies. Indeed, one of the reasons the EHMs set their sights on Ecuador in the first place was because the sea of oil beneath its Amazon region is believed to rival the oil fields of the Middle East.
On top of that, Venezuela, our third-largest oil supplier, had recently elected a populist president, Hugo Chavez, who took a strong stand against what he referred to as U. Ecuador is typical of countries around the world that EHMs have brought into the economic- political fold. Of the remaining S25, three-quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. All of those people — millions in Ecuador, billions around the planet —are potential terrorists.
Not because they believe in com-munism or anarchism or are intrinsically evil, but simply because they are desperate. The subtlety of this modern empire building puts the Roman centurions, the Spanish conquistadors, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European colonial powers to shame. We EHMs are crafty; we learned from history. Today we do not carry swords. We do not wear armor or clothes that set us apart. In countries like Ecuador, Nigeria, and Indonesia, we dress like local schoolteachers and shop owners.
In Washington and Paris, we look like government bureaucrats and bankers. We appear humble, normal. We visit project sites and stroll through impoverished villages. We profess altruism, talk with local papers about the wonderful humanitarian things we are doing. We cover the conference tables of government committees with our spreadsheets and financial projections, and we lecture at the Harvard Business School about the miracles of macroeconomics.
We are on the record, in the open. Or so we portray ourselves and so are we accepted. It is how the system works. We seldom resort to anything illegal because the system itself is built on subterfuge, and the system is by definition legitimate.
However — and this is a very large caveat —- if we fail, an even more sinister breed steps in, ones we EHMs refer to as the jackals, men who trace their heritage directly to those earlier empires.
The jackals are always there, lurking in the shadows. When they emerge, heads of state are overthrown or die in violent "accidents. When the jackals fail, young Ameri-cans are sent in to kill and to die. As I passed the monster, that hulking mammoth wall of gray con-crete rising from the river, I was very conscious of the sweat that soaked myclothes and of the tightening in my intestines.
I headed on down intcHhe jungle to meet with the indigenous people wrho are determined to fight to the last man in order to stop this empire I helped create, and I was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt. How, I asked myself, did a nice kid from rural New Hampshire ever get into such a dirty business? I was an only child, born into the middle class in Both my parents came from three centuries of New England Yankee stock; their strict, moralistic, staunchly Republican attitudes reflected generations of puritanical ancestors.
They were the first in their fam-ilies to attend college — on scholarships. My mother became a high school Latin teacher. When I was born, in Hanover, New Hampshire, he was recuperating from a bro-ken hip in a Texas hospital. I did not see him until I was a year old. He took a job teaching languages at Tilton School, a boys' board-ing school in rural New Hampshire. The campus stood high on a hill, proudly— some would say arrogantly—towering over the town of the same name.
This exclusive institution limited its enrollment to about fifty students in each grade level, nine through twelve. My family was cash starved; however, we most certainly did not see ourselves as poor. Although the school's teachers received very little salary, all our needs were provided free: food, housing, heat, water, and the workers who mowed our lawn and shoveled our snow. Beginning on my fourth birthday, I ate in the prep school dining 3 room, shagged balls for the soccer teams my dad coached, and handed out towels in the locker room.
It is an understatement to say that the teachers and their wives felt superior to the locals. I used to hear my parents joking about be-ing the lords of the manor, ruling over the lowly peasants — the townies. I knew it was more than a joke. My elementary and middle school friends belonged to that peasant class; they were very- poor. Their parents were dirt farmers, lumber-jacks, and mill workers. They resented "the preppies on the hill," and in turn, my father and mother discouraged me from socializing with the townie girls, who they called "tarts" and "sluts.
I had a hard time understanding my parents' perspective; however, I deferred to their wishes. Every year we spent the three months of my dad's summer vacation at a lake cottage built by my grandfather in It was surrounded by forests, and at night we could hear owls and mountain lions. We had no neighbors; I was the only child within walking distance. In the early years, I passed the days by pretending that the trees were knights of the Round Table and damsels in distress named Ann, Priscilla, or Judy depending on the year.
My passion was, I had no doubt, as strong as that of Lancelot for Guinevere — and even more secretive. At fourteen, I received free tuition to Tilton School. With my par-ents' prodding, I rejected everything to do with the town and never saw my old friends again.
When my new classmates went home to their mansions and penthouses for vacation, I remained alone on the hill. Their girlfriends were debutantes; I had no girlfriends. All the girls I knew were "sluts"; I had cast them off, and they had forgotten me. I was alone — and terribly frustrated. My parents were masters at manipulation: they assured me that I was privileged to have such an opportunity and that some day I would be grateful. I would find the perfect wife, one suited to our high moral standards.
Inside, though, I seethed. I craved female com-panionship — sex; the idea of a slut was most alluring. However, rather than rebelling, I repressed my rage and expressed my frustration by excelling. I was an honor student, captain of two varsity teams, editor of the school newspaper.
I was determined to show up my rich classmates and to leave Tilton behind forever. Dur-ing my senior year, I was awarded a full athletic scholarship to Brown and an academic scholarship to Middlebury.
I chose Brown, mainly because I preferred being an athlete — and because it was located in a city. Middlebury was, in my perception, merely an inflated version of Tilton — albeit in rural Vermont instead of rural New Hampshire. True, it was coed, but I was poor and most everyone else was wealthy, and I had not attended school with a female in four years.
I lacked confidence, felt outclassed, was miserable. I pleaded with my dad to let me drop out or take a year off. I wanted to move to Boston and learn about life and women. He would not hear of it. I have come to understand that life is composed of a series of coincidences.
How we react to these —how we exercise what some refer to as free will — is everything; the choices we make within the boundaries of the twists of fate determine who we are.
Two major coincidences that shaped my life occurred at Middlebury. One came in the form of an Iranian, the son of a general who was a personal advisor to the shah; the other was a beautiful young woman named Ann, like my childhood sweetheart. The first, whom I will call Farhad, had played professional soccer in Rome.
He was endowed with an athletic physique, curly black hair, soft walnut eyes, and a background and charisma that made him irresistible to women. He was my opposite in many ways. I worked hard to win his friendship, and he taught me many things that would serve me well in the years to come. I also met Ann. Al-though she was seriously dating a young man who attended another college, she took me under her wing. Our platonic relationship was the first truly loving one I had ever experienced.
Farhad encouraged me to drink, party, and ignore my parents. I consciously chose to stop studying. I decided I would break my aca-demic leg to get even with my father.
My grades plummeted; I lost my scholarship. My father threatened to disown me; Farhad egged me on. I stormed into the dean's office and quit school. It was a pivotal mo-ment in my life. Farhad and I celebrated my last night in town together at a local bar. A drunken farmer, a giant of a man, accused me of flirting with his wife, picked me up off my feet, and hurled me against a wall.
Farhad stepped between us, drew a knife, and slashed the farmer open at the cheek. Then he dragged me across the room and shoved me through a window, out onto a ledge high above Otter Creek. We jumped and made our way along the river and back to our dorm.
The next morning, when interrogated by the campus police, I lied and refused to admit any knowledge of the incident. Nevertheless, Farhad was expelled. We both moved to Boston and shared an apart-ment there. Later that year, , several of my friends at the newspaper were drafted. I welcomed her attention. She graduated in , while I still had another year to complete at BU.
She adamantly refused to move in with me until we were married. Although I joked about being black-mailed, and in fact did resent what I saw as a continuation of my parents' archaic and prudish set of moral standards, I enjoyed our times together and I wanted more.
We married. Ann's father, a brilliant engineer, had masterminded the naviga-tional system for an important class of missile and was rewarded with a high-level position in the Department of the Navy.
His best friend, a man Ann called Uncle Frank not his real name , was em-ployed as an executive at the highest echelons of the National Secu-rity Agency NSA , the country's least-known — and by most accounts largest — spy organization.
Shortly after our marriage, the military summoned me for my physical. I passed and therefore faced the prospect of Vietnam upon graduation. The idea of fighting in Southeast Asia tore me apart emotionally, though war has always fascinated me.
I was raised on tales about my colonial ancestors — who include Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen — and I had visited all the New England and upstate New York battle sites of both the French and Indian and the Revo-lutionary wars. I read every historical novel I could find. But as the media exposed the atrocities and the in-consistencies of U. I found myself wondering whose side Paine would have taken.
I was sure he would have joined our Vietcong enemies. Uncle Frank came to my rescue. He informed me that an NSA job made one eligible for draft deferment, and he arranged for a series of meetings at his agency, including a day of grueling polygraph-monitored interviews. I was told that these tests would determine whether I was suitable material for NSA recruitment and training, and if I was, would provide a profile of my strengths and weaknesses, which would be used to map out my career.
Given my attitude to-ward the Vietnam War, I was convinced I would fail the tests. Under examination, I admitted that as a loyal American I op-posed the war, and I was surprised when the interviewers did not pursue this subject.
Instead, they focused on my upbringing, my attitudes toward my parents, the emotions generated by the fact I grew up as a poor puritan among so many wealthy, hedonistic prep-pies. They also explored my frustration about the lack of women, sex, and money in my life, and the fantasy world that had evolved as a re-sult. I was amazed by the attention they gave to my relationship with Farhad and by their interest in my willingness to lie to the campus police to protect him.
At first I assumed all these things that seemed so negative to me marked me as an NSA reject, but the interviews continued, suggest-ing otherwise. It was not until several years later that I realized that from an NSA viewpoint these negatives actually are positive. Their assessment had less to do with issues of loyalty to my country than with the frustrations of my life.
Anger at my parent, an obsession with women, and my ambition to live the good life gave them a hook; I was seducible. My determination to excel in school and in sports, my ultimate rebellion against my father, my ability to get along with foreigners, and my willingness to lie to the police were exactly the types of attributes they sought.
I also discovered, later, that Farhad's father worked for the U. However, before I had officially accepted this offer, I impulsively attended a seminar given at BU by a Peace Corps recruiter. A major selling point was that, like the NSA, Peace Corps jobs made one eligible for draft deferments. The decision to sit in on that seminar was one of those coincidences that seemed insignificant at the time but turned out to have life-changing implications.
The recruiter described several places in the world that especially needed volunteers. One of these was the Amazon rain forest where, he pointed out, indigenous people lived very much as natives of North America had until the arrival of Europeans. I had always dreamed of living like the Abnakis who inhabited New Hampshire when my ancestors first settled there. I knew I had Abnaki blood in my veins, and I wanted to learn the type of forest lore they understood so well.
I approached the recruiter after his talk and asked about the possibility of being assigned to the Amazon. He assured me there was a great need for volunteers in that region and that my chances would be excellent. I called Uncle Frank. To my surprise, Uncle Frank encouraged me to consider the Peace Corps. He confided that after the fall of Hanoi — which in those days was deemed a certainty by men in his position — the Amazon would become a hot spot.
I was be-ing upgraded from spy to EHM, although I had never heard the term and would not for a few more years. I had no idea that there were hundreds of men and women scattered around the world, working for consulting firms and other private companies, people who never received a penny of salary from any government agency and yet were serving the interests of empire. Nor could I have guessed that a new type, with more euphemistic titles, would num-ber in the thousands by the end of the millennium, and that I would play a significant role in shaping this growing army.
Ann and I applied to the Peace Corps and requested an assign-ment in the Amazon. When our acceptance notification arrived, my first reaction was one of extreme disappointment. The letter stated that we would be sent to Ecuador. Oh no, I thought. I requested the Amazon, not Africa. I went to an atlas and looked up Ecuador. I was dismayed when I could not find it anywhere on the African continent. In the index, though, I discovered that it is indeed located in Latin America, and I saw on the map that the river systems flowing off its Andean gla-ciers form the headwaters to the mighty Amazon.
Further reading assured me that Ecuador's jungles were some of the world's most di-verse and formidable, and that the indigenous people still lived much as they had for millennia.
We accepted. We lived in the Amazon with the Shuar whose lifestyle did indeed resemble that of precolo-nial North American natives; we also worked in the Andes with de-scendants of the Incas. It was a side of the world I never dreamed still existed. I found my-self sympathizing with these indigenous people who subsisted on hunting and farming.
I felt an odd sort of kinship with them. Somehow, they reminded me of the townies I had left behind. One day a man in a business suit, Einar Greve, landed at the airstrip in our community. He was a vice president at Chas. Main, Inc. MAIN , an international consulting firm that kept a very low profile and that was in charge of studies to determine whether the World Bank should lend Ecuador and its neighboring countries bil-lions of dollars to build hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure projects.
Einar also was a colonel in the U. Army Reserve. He started talking with me about the benefits of working for a company like MAIN. When I mentioned that I had been accepted by the NSA before joining the Peace Corps, and that I was considering going back to them, he informed me that he sometimes acted as an NSA liaison; he gave me a look that made me suspect that part of his assignment was to evaluate my capabilities. I now believe that he was updating my profile, and especially sizing up my abilities to sur-vive in environments most North Americans would find hostile.
He asked me to send him reports assessing Ecuador's economic prospects. I had a small portable typewriter, loved to write, and was quite happy to comply with this request. Over a period of about a year, I sent Einar at least fifteen long letters. In these letters, I speculated on Ecuador's economic and political future, and I appraised the growing frustration among the indigenous communities as they struggled to confront oil companies, interna-tional development agencies, and other attempts to draw them into the modern world.
During our private meet-ing, he emphasized that MAIN'S primary business was engineering but that his biggest client, the World Bank, recently had begun in-sisting that he keep economists on staff to produce the critical eco-nomic forecasts used to determine the feasibility and magnitude of engineering projects. He confided that he had previously hired three highly qualified economists with impeccable credentials — two with master's degrees and one with a PhD.
They had failed miserably. One had suffered a nervous breakdown in an isolated Panamanian village; he was escorted by Panamanian police to the airport and put on a plane back to the United States. And given your living conditions in Ecuador, I'm confident you can survive almost anywhere. I had turned twenty-six — the magical age when the draft board no longer wanted me. I consulted with Ann's family; they encouraged me to take the job, and I assumed this reflected Un-cle Frank's attitude as well.
I recalled him mentioning the possibility I would end up working for a private firm. Nothing was ever stated openly, but I had no doubt that my employment at MAIN was a con-sequence of the arrangements Uncle Frank had made three years earlier, in addition to my experiences in Ecuador and my willingness to write about that country's economic and political situation.
My head reeled for several weeks, and I had a very swollen ego. I had earned only a bachelor's degree from BU, which did not seem to warrant a position as an economist with such a lofty consulting com-pany. I knew that many of my BU classmates who had been rejected by the draft and had gone on to earn MBAs and other graduate de-grees would be overcome with jealousy.
I visualized myself as a dash-ing secret agent, heading off to exotic lands, lounging beside hotel swimming pools, surrounded by gorgeous bikini-clad women, mar-tini in hand. Although this was merely fantasy, I would discover that it held el-ements of truth. Einar had hired me as an economist, but I was soon to learn that my real job went far beyond that, and that it was in fact closer to James Bond's than I ever could have guessed.
These were referred to as partners or associates, and their position was coveted. Not only did the partners have power over everyone else, but also they made the big bucks. Discretion was their hallmark; they dealt with heads of state and other chief executive officers who expect their consultants, like their attorneys and psychotherapists, to honor a strict code of absolute confidentiality. Talking with the press was taboo.
It simply was not tolerated. As a consequence, hardly any-one outside MAIN had ever heard of us, although many were famil-iar with our competitors, such as Arthur D. I use the term competitors loosely, because in fact MAIN was in a league by itself. The majority of our professional staff was engineers, yet we owned no equipment and never constructed so much as a storage shed.
Many MAINers were ex-military; however, we did not contract with the Department of Defense or with any of the military services. Our stock-in-trade was something so different from the norm that during my first months there even I could not figure out what we did. I knew only that my first real assignment would be in Indonesia, and that I would be part of an eleven-man team sent to create a master energy plan for the island of Java.
He would glide his fingers through the air and up over his head. No one talked much about them or seemed to know where he had gone. When he was in the office, he often invited me to sit with him for a few minutes over coffee. He asked about Ann, our new apartment, and the cat we had brought with us from Ecuador.
I grew bolder as I came to know him better, and I tried to learn more about him and what I wTould be expected to do in my job. But I never re-ceived answers that satisfied me; he was a master at turning con-versations around. On one such occasion, he gave me a peculiar look. I was in Washington recently It'll be a while before you leave for Indonesia.
I think you should use some of your time to read up on Kuwait. I knew that I would be expected to produce econometric mod-els for Indonesia and Java, and I decided that I might as well get started by doing one for Kuwait. However, my BS in business administration had not prepared me as an econometrician, so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to go about it. I went so far as to enroll in a couple of courses on the subject. In the process, I discovered that statistics can be manipu-lated to produce a large array of conclusions, including those sub-stantiating the predilections of the analyst.
MAIN was a macho corporation. There were only four women who held professional positions in However, there were per-haps two hundred women divided between the cadres of personal 12 "In for Life" 13 secretaries — every vice president and department manager had one — and the steno pool, which served the rest of us.
I had become accustomed to this gender bias, and I was therefore especially as-tounded by what happened one day in the BPL's reference section. An attractive brunette woman came up and sat in a chair across the table from me. In her dark green business suit, she looked very sophisticated. I judged her to be several years my senior, but I tried to focus on not noticing her, on acting indifferent.
After a few min-utes, without a word, she slid an open book in my direction. I looked up into her soft green eyes, and she extended her hand.
I could not be-lieve this was happening to me. During our first hour together, she explained that my position was an unusual one and that we needed to keep everything highly confidential.
She told me that no one had given me specifics about my job because no one wras authorized to — except her. Then she in-formed me that her assignment was to mold me into an economic hit man. The very name awakened old cloak-and-dagger dreams. I was embarrassed by the nervous laughter I heard coming from me. She smiled and assured me that humor was one of the reasons they used the term. I confessed ignorance about the role of economic hit men. No one can know about your involvement — not even your wife.
Then you'll have to choose. Your de-cision is final. Once you're in, you're in for life. I know now what I did not then — that Claudine took full advantage of the personality weaknesses the NSA profile had disclosed about me. Her approach, a combination of physical seduction and verbal manipulation, was tailored specifically for me, and yet it fit within the standard operating procedures I have since seen used by a variety of businesses when the stakes are high and the pressure to close lucrative deals is great.
She knew from the start that I would not jeopardize my marriage by disclosing our clandes-tine activities. And she was brutally frank when it came to describ-ing the shadowy side of things that would be expected of me. I have no idea who paid her salary, although I have no reason to suspect it was not, as her business card implied, MAIN. At the time, I was too naive, intimidated, and bedazzled to ask the questions that today seem so obvious.
Claudine told me that there were two primary objectives of my wrork. My job, she said, was to forecast the effects of investing billions of dollars in a country.
Specifically, I would produce studies that pro-jected economic growth twenty to twenty-five years into the future and that evaluated the impacts of a variety of projects. Or I might be told that the country was being offered the op-portunity to receive a modern electric utility system, and it would be up to me to demonstrate that such a system would result in sufficient economic growth to justify the loan.
The critical factor, in every case, was gross national product. The project that resulted in the highest average annual growth of GNP won. The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were intended to create large profits for the contractors, and to make 14 Part In for Life" 15 a handful of wealthy and influential families in the receiving coun-tries very happy, while assuring the long-term financial dependence and therefore the political loyalty of governments around the world.
The larger the loan, the better. The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest citizens of health, ed-ucation, and other social services for decades to come was not taken into consideration.
Claudine and I openly discussed the deceptive nature of GNP. For instance, the growth of GNP may result even when it profits only one person, such as an individual who owns a utility company, and even if the majority of the population is burdened with debt. The rich get richer and the poor grow poorer. Yet, from a statistical standpoint, this is recorded as economic progress. Like U. Our schools and our press have taught us to perceive all of our actions as altruistic.
Over the years, I've repeatedly heard com-ments like, "If they're going to burn the U. However, these people have no clue that the main reason we establish embassies around the world is to serve our own interests, which during the last half of the twentieth century meant turning the American republic into a global empire.
Despite credentials, such people are as uneducated as those eighteenth-century colonists who believed that the Indians fighting to defend their lands were servants of the devil. Within several months, I would leave for the island of Java in the country of Indonesia, described at that time as the most heavily pop-ulated piece of real estate on the planet.
Indonesia also happened to be an oil-rich Muslim nation and a hotbed of communist activity. If they join the Communist bloc, well You'll be well rewarded, of course, and can move on to other projects in exotic places. The world is your shopping cart.
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Looking to lifehack his way out of any actual effort, he purchases a "hypnology device" on a whim from an online shopping site. Although skeptical at first, Soichi is surprised to learn that the device has a much more potent hypnotic effect than he could have ever imagined.
Naturally, our hero scraps his original plans at once, instead devising a new plan to use the machine for more erotic endeavors-with campus queen Tsukino as his first target. Monica is the Boss. Most of all Monica adores authority and to control people and she manages with everything not in a sensitive or delicate way.
If Monica was your Boss, you would be likely fired. For certain, everybody has ever met their own Monica! Take part in her luxurious life. Monica is sure that her existence is going to be always the same! What do you think? If suddenly you appear as witness of her falling down lower and lower in the social standing?
Fashion Business: EP3 Crossroads v7 has been released! What's new: - Biff: New auditions. Things are getting more and more fun. Intrigue and blackmail. How will those affect Stephanie and Melanie? What will end up happening with her because of that? Bug fixes and improvements: - You can now set a custom name for your saves. He is a strong guy, but there is one but, he is lazy and neurotic and a homebody, he even forgot what a woman's caress is.
Sat at home doing constant self-medication, just not to go out into the white light from home, to people. And he gave up his job a long time ago, and he is trying to make money on the internet. But all these efforts are in vain. And then one day he still gathered his will into a fist and went to get a job. And then his life regained its colors, positivity and adventure. Not without romance with girls.
Fetish Locator - v2. The latest app going around campus is Fetish Locator! Each day sexy coeds connect to perform challenges and earn points by uploading the photos. Join our main character, who hopes to earn enough points to go to a very special party, where he can finally hook-up with the lust of his life! Week-2 is finished! There are a lot of nice improvements and very challenging bonus content to unlock! Go and play the final version now! BadHero - Version 2.
And suddenly he was released for unknown reasons. During this time, much has changed. The city was influenced by one person. There are gangs on the streets of the city. They are spreading a new synthetic drug Mirage. Prostitutes do not smile at your meeting. Local merchants pay to others. You have just to go away from the hustle and bustle of the city and live alone. If it is about you, then do it you may not to read further But our hero is not like that.
He is used to be the best in everything. If he has nothing, he will take it from others. And it is better not to get on his way. You will find a power struggle on the streets of the city. Relationship with different girls is an integral part of your future life.
Now you will have a lot of them. The best girls, money, cars. All this will be with you. Our hero urgently needs work.
His ex-girlfriend with her two daughters, took all his money. He will certainly try to find her and get his money back. He works at a private college where young students study. In college, he meets with the sisters. In childhood, their father left them. Frank will replace their father, surrounding them with his love. Changelog: Bad Hero v2. The College [v0. MC is forced to register due to the authority of his mother: principal of Baskerville college.
Secrets, blackmail, harassment, betrayals, but also precious friendships and sincere feelings will be at the center of "the college".
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