A New York Times bestseller. Perkins offers bold solutions to the U.S.'s must pressing problems and passionately addresses how Americans can create a more peaceful and stable world for future generations....

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John Perkins was an economic hit man. His job was to convince countries that are strategically important to the United States—from Indonesia to Panama—to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development and to make sure that the lucrative projects were contracted to U.S. corporations, such as Halliburton and Bechtel. Saddled with huge debts, these countries came under the control of the U.S. government, World Bank, and other U.S.-dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks, dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission.

This extraordinary true story exposes international intrigue, corruption, and little-known government and corporate activities that have dire consequences for American democracy and the world....

With new material from the author

"Economic hit men," John Perkins writes," are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as Empire but one that has taken on terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization." John Perkins should know-he was an economic hit man for an international consulting firm that worked to convince developing countries to accept enormous loans and to funnel that money to U.S. corporations. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the American government and international aid agencies were able to request their "pound of flesh" in favors, including access to natural resources, military cooperation, and political support. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is the story of one man's experiences inside the intrigue, greed, corruption and little-known government and corporate activities that America has been involved in since World War II, and which have dire consequences for the future of democracy and the world....

Create an amazing range of birdhouses and bird feeders with these easy-to-follow woodworking designs. Step-by-step illustrations will inspire the novice woodworker, while more complex projects will challenge those with more experience.

Designs range from simple wooden boxes to magnificent bird mansions suitable for all outdoor spaces, from large gardens to the smallest balcony. There are plans and projects for birdhouses, nesting boxes and feeders with a list of the best materials and notes about where to locate the finished project for best results.

Build Your Own Birdhouses and Feeders includes:

- Clear step-by-step illustrations for each stage of building
- Exploded and technical diagrams in color for each project
- A wide range of projects and designs from the very easy to the ambitious

The 25 designs include:
- Pagoda dovecote
- Old fashioned clapboard house
- Victorian townhouse
- Hollow log birdhouse
- Thatched cottage
- Sailboat
- Miami style art deco
- Wild west saloon...

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man reveals a game that, according to John Perkins, is "as old as Empire" but has taken on new and terrifying dimensions in an era of globalization. And Perkins should know. For many years he worked for an international consulting firm where his main job was to convince LDCs (less developed countries) around the world to accept multibillion-dollar loans for infrastructure projects and to see to it that most of this money ended up at Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown and Root, and other United States engineering and construction companies. This book, which many people warned Perkins not to write, is a blistering attack on a little-known phenomenon that has had dire consequences on both the victimized countries and the U.S....

John Perkins has seen the signs of today's economic meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiascos, the banking industry collapse, the rising tide of unemployment, the shuttering of small businesses across the landscape are all too familiar symptoms of a far greater disease. In his former life as an economic hit man, he was on the front lines both as an observer and a perpetrator of events, once confined only to the third world, that have now sent the United States—and in fact the entire planet—spiraling toward disaster.
 
Here, Perkins pulls back the curtain on the real cause of the current global financial meltdown. He shows how we've been hoodwinked by the CEOs who run the corporatocracy—those few corporations that control the vast amounts of capital, land, and resources around the globe—and the politicians they manipulate. These corporate fat cats, Perkins explains, have sold us all on what he calls predatory capitalism, a misguided form of geopolitics and capitalism that encourages a widespread exploitation of the many to benefit a small number of the already very wealthy. Their arrogance, gluttony, and mismanagement have brought us to this perilous edge. The solution is not a "return to normal."
 
But there is a way out. As Perkins makes clear, we can create a healthy economy that will encourage businesses to act responsibly, not only in the interests of their shareholders and corporate partners (and the lobbyists they have in their pockets), but in the interests of their employees, their customers, the environment, and society at large.

We can create a society that fosters a just, sustainable, and safe world for us and our children. Each one of us makes these choices every day, in ways that are clearly spelled out in this book.
 
"We hold the power," he says, "if only we recognize it." Hoodwinked is a powerful polemic that shows not only how we arrived at this precarious point in our history but also what we must do to stop the global tailspin....

In his stunning memoir, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins detailed his former role as an "economic hit man" in the international corporate skulduggery of a de facto American Empire. Now Perkins zeroes in on hot spots around the world, drawing on interviews to examine the current geopolitical crisis, and providing a compassionate plan to reimagine our world....