PBD Podcast | EP 125 | The Economic Hitman: John Perkins
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PBD Podcast Episode 125. In this episode Patrick Bet-David is joined by Adam Sosnick and author of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", John Perkins.
Purchase John Perkin's book's here:
Confessions of An Economic Hitman: https://amzn.to/34HQwEu
Touching The Jaguar: Transforming Fear into Action to Change Your Life and the World: https://amzn.to/3HVTBzQ
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About Guests:
John Perkins is an American author. His best known book is Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in which Perkins claims to have played a role in an alleged process of economic colonization of Third World countries on behalf of what he portrays as a cabal of corporations, banks, and the United States government. Connect with him here: https://bit.ly/34LgKGt
Adam “Sos” Sosnick has lived a true rags to riches story. He hasn’t always been an authority on money. Follow Adam on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2PqllTj. You can also check out his weekly SOSCAST here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw4s_zB_R7I0VW88nOW4PJkyREjT7rJic
Connect with Patrick on social media: https://linktr.ee/patrickbetdavid
About the host:
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media, the #1 YouTube channel for entrepreneurship with more than 3 million subscribers. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Bet-David is passionate about shaping the next generation of leaders by teaching the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and personal development while inspiring people to break free from limiting beliefs to achieve their dreams.
Follow the guests in this episode:
John Perkins: https://bit.ly/34LgKGt
Adam Sosnick: https://bit.ly/2PqllTj
To reach the Valuetainment team you can email: info@valuetainment.com
Check out PBD's official website here: https://bit.ly/32tvEjH
0:00 - Start
3:03 - How Jon Perkins became an economic hitman
9:53 - Who John Perkins worked for
13:42 - Why did countries agree to sit down with John Perkins?
25:58 - The Top 3 countries for tourism in the 70's
43:36 - John Perkins recalls the time he was poisoned and almost killed
55:23 - 2 ways to conquer a nation
1:06:38 -The national debt is insurmountable
1:19:52 - Ukraine & Russia
1:33:32 - Hillary Clinton Paid To Spy On President Trump
All right, folks, episode number 125 with the one and only John Perkins, economic hitman.
John, when was the last time we interviewed?
It was a year ago, a year and a half ago when we sat down.
It was before you had another baby.
It was before I had another baby.
Before Brooklyn.
Before Brooklyn, and I think it was, it seems to me it might have been in August of 2020.
It was prior to the election.
Right.
Because we were talking about the fact that he was a matter of fact.
There's no way Trump's going to win.
He was right.
He was right.
Yeah, he said there's no way Trump's going to win.
Prognosticator of the winter.
He was.
He was.
But, you know, it's so weird the timing of when you're here today, because this was not planned.
Like, there is no conspiracy going on today.
It happens to be that Mr. John Perkins, the economic hitman, is sitting here right after the Durham investigations came out, which I'm sure you haven't read or followed or you don't know what's going on there.
I have no idea.
Which is great, which we'll talk about because you have no idea.
If you watch mainstream media, you would have an idea.
You would have an idea.
Because everybody, I bet they had a conference call and they said the key word to use in your title is allegedly, allegedly.
Everybody was about allegedly.
But we'll get into that.
For some people that don't know what your background is, let me just read the Wikipedia so people know what the Wikipedia says.
John Perkins is an American author.
He's best known for his book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, 2004, which was a big hit, in which Perkins claims he had played a role in an alleged process of economic colonization of third world countries on behalf of what he portrays as a cabal of corporations, banks, and United States of America.
The book's claims were met with skepticism and rebuttal by some, but he spent more than 70 weeks on New York Times bestseller list, has been published in at least 32 different languages and is used in many colleges and university programs.
That's a pretty good intro right there by Wikipedia because typically they talk shit.
But they're being nice to you.
Yeah, except they're saying that these things are alleged.
Allegedly.
So that pisses you off too.
And they get the numbers all wrong.
It's way more than 32 languages now.
Is it in Farsi?
Is it at least in Farsi?
I'm pretty sure it is.
It has to be in Farsi because you got some choice words about the shawl with there.
So for folks who don't know, for folks who have no idea what it is, I mean, I've interviewed hitmen before, like legit hitmen, okay, who their job is to, they come, they kill you, that's their job.
That's what we call the jackals.
Okay, you call them the jackals.
Okay.
But, you know, I was, you know, Adam is always looking for great jobs.
And this morning he went on, what was it?
With jobs.com, monster.
All these things he was looking at how he can apply to be an economic hitman.
He couldn't find a single job.
I looked everywhere.
He looked everywhere.
How does one become an economic hitman?
Well, I guess the first question would be, why would you want to?
Because I don't recommend it.
For me, how it happened was that when I was graduating, just about to graduate from business school, I was going to be drafted.
And I really didn't want to go to Vietnam.
I didn't really want to kill Vietnamese people or be killed by them.
So I was looking for a way out.
And I was married at the time to a woman whose father was very high up in the Department of the Navy.
And his best friend was very high up in the National Security Agency, which was draft deferable.
And he arranged for an interview.
So I go into this interview, spent a couple of days on a lie detector.
And I was sure I failed.
For one thing, when I had been in Middlebury College, there was an incident with an Iranian, if you can believe that.
Be careful with those guys.
Well, truthfully, this guy carried a knife.
I mean, a little tiny jackknife, but he showed me how he put his thumb way up the blade, so it's just a little bit of the touching.
He'd already showed me this.
He'd been a professional soccer player at the Club of Rome in Italy, and then gone to Middlebury College.
And we were in a bar together.
What year is this?
64.
Okay.
And anyway, make a long story short, a big heavy farmer sucker punched me, knocked me across the room, and Farhard, my friend from Iran, comes up and slashes him across the cheek.
Lots of blood comes out.
He's got this little tiny, just a pinprick, really, but it looks bad.
It feels bad.
And the farmer's screaming his head off, and Farhard pushes me into the men's room and out the window into Otta Creek, this river that runs by.
And we make our way back to the dorm at Middlebury.
And the next morning, I was pretty drunk.
The next morning there's a knock on the door and it's the cops.
So they pull me into the police station.
And as I'm sitting there waiting to be interviewed, another one's escorting Farhard out.
And he doesn't let me talk to him.
They take me in and they start questioning me.
Did you see Farhard with a knife?
And I lied.
I just lied and lied.
I feared Farhard more than I feared the police, quite frankly.
I too fear Iranians more than I do.
Yeah, well, I've always been told don't sit too close to them.
This is going to execute everybody.
I'm worried about him, not me.
I get desperate.
I got a knife in my left hand right now.
Don't worry about that.
Anyway, you know, so now I'm taking this NSA lie detector test.
And they asked me, have you ever been interviewed how to run in with the police?
And I had to tell them, yeah, I lied to the police.
So I figured, well, this is going to screw me.
And then they asked me how I feel about Vietnam.
I say, well, I don't intend to go.
And so I figured I failed miserably.
Got it.
But no, they hired me.
And you know, they offered me a job.
And you know, the truth of the matter is, they were very happy that I had the guts to lie to the police.
Plus, Farhard's father was a general in the Shah's military and worked for the CIA.
So here I was friends with a guy whose father was in the CIA in Iran.
I was good material.
And they knew that we had already lost the war in Vietnam, basically.
It wasn't public knowledge, really.
There was a lot of controversy.
But the NSA knew, so they didn't care that I didn't want to go.
It was pretty smart of me not to want to go there.
So it was really funny.
So, you know, I get offered this job.
And then I ended up going in the Peace Corps for three years because they encouraged that to learn another language, to learn survival techniques, et cetera, et cetera.
And afterwards, I came out and was hired.
And they told me, you know, when you end up working for us, you may not actually work for us.
You may work for a private corporation, but they have connections with us, which was true.
So I became an economist, chief economist at this consulting firm that had very, very close ties to the United States, what do we call it?
Intelligence community?
Information gathering.
Spy agencies.
Did you know at the time?
Like, are you aware of what's going on?
No, not really.
I mean, you know, it's so easy to convince yourself that you're not aware, even though I had suspicions.
But I came from a poor, pretty poor teacher's family in New Hampshire.
I grew up in a boys' boarding school, surrounded by rich kids.
My dad was a teacher, and he didn't make any money.
The school gave us a house and food.
We had a decent life, didn't want for anything.
But I was surrounded by kids who came from Tehran and Paris and Buenos Aires and Park Avenue in New York.
And, you know, I heard all these stories.
You know, I was stuck in this little town in New Hampshire always.
And so.
Did these kids bully you or did you have good friendships with them?
I had good friendships.
I've always been a good con artist.
That's what it takes to be an economic hitman, you know.
And I was captain of two sports teams and so on.
Oh, shit.
But I always had this inkling to go to Tehran, to go to Paris, to go to these places.
And suddenly now, as I get into this business, I'm flying first class around the world.
I'm meeting with presidents.
I'm doing all the things that I dreamed of doing.
So I really didn't want to know the truth, even though the more and more I began to suspect it.
But the line that I was sold, Patrick, was that what you're doing is a really good thing because what I was paid to do was to convince countries that had resources our corporations covet, like oil, to take huge loans from the World Bank or one of the sister organizations and hire our companies to build big infrastructure projects like power plants and roads and airports in these countries, which would make our companies get big profits.
The rich families in the country would prosper because they owned the industries, they owned banks, they owned the things that benefited from improved infrastructure.
But the majority of the people would suffer because money was diverted from education, health care, and other social services to pay off the debts on the loan.
And in the end, they couldn't pay the debts, so we'd go back in and say, hey, you owe us.
So sell your oil or whatever, copper, whatever the resource was, real cheap to our corporations without environmental or social regulations.
And that was really what my job was.
But statistically, you could show that when you invest in these infrastructure projects, the economy grows.
It does.
Because we measure GDP or GNP growth.
And that really just measures the very rich.
So let's go back to what I recall from our meeting there.
So the business model of what you did.
So one, if I remember, that you didn't directly work for the government, because if you did get caught, then it would look like it's the government.
So it was a corporation that you would work for, and that corporation is who would send you to go negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government with not necessarily the bigger countries.
It was more smaller, not even mid-sized.
Would you say it was smaller countries that you would go to that had some kind of a natural resource that America wanted?
And then the negotiation was, we're going to come and build some infrastructure.
We'll invest some money into your country.
They'll go into a shit ton of debt.
Then in a way to get money back is you're going to allow us to build a military in your country.
You're going to give us these resources for 50 cents on a dollar or 10 cents on a dollar, pretty much for nothing.
And then if you don't listen to us, we're going to kill you.
Is that pretty much explain the business model you followed?
Yes.
Yes, it is.
And so the we're going to kill you part was, I wasn't going to kill, though.
I never carried a gun, but I knew the guys who were right behind me, we called them jackals.
They were CIAS.
That's what you were talking about, Hitman earlier.
They'd be in the room with you while you're having this conversation?
No.
No.
I theoretically didn't know anything about them.
Who's in the room with you when you're having these conversations?
Are you the point man?
Are you saying, hey, here's the deal?
Yeah.
And who's with you?
I'm probably just meeting one-on-one with the Minister of Finance or perhaps the President.
You're rolling in solo to these countries and having these.
Well, no, I've got two or three of the guys who work for me outside.
They're probably not sitting in the meeting.
They might be.
They just depended.
But they were there to help produce the numbers.
Frankly, I was a lousy economist.
I was chief economist, but I was a good talker.
Like I said, I was a good con artist.
But I knew how to hire the guys that could crunch the numbers and come up with these econometric models that showed how much the country was going to benefit that was used to convince the presidents, and they would use it to convince their people, the press in their countries, and so on.
You know, there was an interesting cartoon that sort of sums this up that came out many years ago, and it showed me, or an economic hitman, in one hand holding a fistful of dollars and saying, hey, Mr. President, in this hand, I've got hundreds of millions of dollars for you and your family if you buy my deal.
And then in this hand, I've got a gun, in case you don't.
And that was pretty much it.
I didn't have the gun, but I knew that.
And he knew, because the United States, you know, we've admitted to taking out the life of Salvador Allende of Chile, the Shah of Iran, and most of the deck in Iran before that, most of the deck particularly.
And we didn't really take out the Shah.
We took out most of the deck.
Lumumba in the Congo, Ziem in Vietnam, Arbens in Guatemala.
And recently, 2009, in Honduras, President Zelaya.
So a lot of the activity was in Central America, South America, and then in the Middle East?
Is that Africa?
Or the majority of the countries?
Anywhere, any country that had resources, corporations coveted, that needed money also.
Well, and then some, like Iran, that didn't really need the money, but they needed us to protect them from Russia.
And Saudi Arabia had their reasons.
But usually it was countries that needed money, had resources.
I focused a lot on Latin America because I'd been there a lot.
I speak fluent Spanish, so it was a natural for me.
But I also spent probably during the 10 years, a year in Iran, a lot of time in Indonesia.
Now, let me ask you, John, why did these prime, like Omar Torrijos, I believe, right, Panama, why did, which was one of your favorite guys that you would meet with, why did some of these guys agree to sit down with you?
What is the call for them to say, yeah, I'll sit down with John.
What call came before you showed up?
They would usually get a call from the World Bank, maybe the Secretary of State of the United States, somebody saying, you know, this man's passing through your country and would like to arrange a meeting to you and talk about what we might do to help your country.
That's the script.
That's the script.
Something like that, yes.
And that phone call was made to who?
To the president or to his chief of staff or whoever sets up such meetings.
But it would probably end up in his hands and Torrijos.
So he was an interesting guy, you know, the head of the state of Panama.
He was a very charismatic party animal, loved his cigars and his rum and barbecues.
I got to know him very well because he was very charismatic that way.
Flamboyant or not flamboyant?
Just party.
Yes, flamboyant.
This is in the 70s?
Yes.
This is before Noriega and everything that happened with that?
Yes, Marie.
Remember my facts, right?
Yeah, Noriega came after that.
So this was during the negotiations for the Panama Canal Treaty.
And it was to Carter and Torrijos.
And Torrijos got pretty much what he wanted in that.
And he became a hero throughout the third, what we call the third, I like to call it the lower-income countries, if you want to call it that.
He became a hero.
And so he became very dangerous.
So the United States really wanted to bring him under control.
So I was sent down to rein him in.
And he wouldn't be reined in.
He had tremendous integrity and a big ego.
Also, you know, he liked to be on the front page.
And he liked to be known as David facing Goliath.
Little country, Panama.
Underdog mentality.
Very, very small country, very small population, but it had the canal.
And he became very well known throughout the world as a guy who would stand up.
So when you spoke to him and you used the same protocol that you used with others in the past, it wasn't effective with this guy when you spoke to him.
He just wasn't going to budge.
And he openly would tell you.
What did he tell you openly when you guys spoke?
Well, he was the one that really helped me understand what we were truly doing.
He pointed out to me something, and I'll use today's numbers, but in those days it was similar.
Today, if three Americans own as much wealth as half the United States population, right?
And if those three Americans made 10% on their assets last year and half the country lost 3% and everybody else stayed the same, we'd show a growth of something close to 4%.
So it would look like the whole country prospered, when in fact only three people prospered.
Half stayed the same and half lost 3%.
And Torrijos pointed that out to me.
So if that's true in the United States, where three people own as much as 50%, imagine what it's like where three people own as much as 95%, which is true in a lot of these countries.
Torrijos pointed that out to me.
He said, you know, these numbers that you're throwing around, like GDP, it's totally rigged in favor of the rich.
You're not helping the poor people with any of these countries.
And so he was one of the people that really helped me have to face the truth of what I was doing.
And at the same time, one time he took me out on this yacht.
He didn't own the yacht, but he had a lot of friends.
He was always out on these yachts.
We're on this yacht where we're drinking all kinds of rum drinks.
And we're surrounded by these beautiful bikini-clad ladies.
Sounds horrible.
Just awful.
You would have hated it.
Yeah.
Panama.
Pikachu ladies, yachts.
Yes.
This is horrible.
Patrick, I just saw a video of you on a boat as you were arriving here in Florida deciding to come here.
And it was kind of like that, except you were surrounded by all these guys.
Don't get me started on that, John.
Okay, so you're having this drink with him.
You're on the yacht.
You're having a conversation with him.
What's he telling you?
He pats me on the back.
He offers me a cigar.
He says, hey, John, why don't you come work for me?
You won't make nearly as much money, but you'll have a lot more fun and you'll feel really good about what you're doing for the world.
He tried to recruit you.
Eight for him.
Was it pretty convincing?
I didn't.
No, I don't wish I had.
I think he got assassinated.
It's never been proven, but his plane went down in a very, his private plane in a very suspicious, under very suspicious way.
It was called, what was the thing called?
It was a name for it, no, like Project Something that United Fruit, or was that more Guatemala?
No, that was Mor Guatemala.
That was Guatemala with Arbenz, yeah.
Yeah, so with him, you know, you said something about when he got on the plane, right after the whole deal he did with Carter, there was a tape recorder that went in and the tape recorder blew up.
Has that been verified?
That was a tape recorder or no?
No, when he got on the plane, somebody handed him a tape recorder, and that's it.
The suspicion is that it was a bomb.
But, you know, when a plane blows up, there's no smoking gun because it blows up too.
And just three months before, less than three months before that, Jaime Roldoz, the president of Ecuador, who also stood up to me, did not accept the deals.
I wasn't as friendly with him.
He was loved, by the way.
He was loved and adored.
He was loved in adoring and democratically elected, for the first Democratically elected president in Ecuador in a number of years.
He wasn't as warm and fuzzy and friendly as Torrijos, so I never got to know him personally the way I did Torrijos.
But so he died in this plane crash in May 1981.
And Torrijos met with his family after that.
And he said, you know, my brother Jaime was just assassinated by the CIA.
And again, that was never proven, but that was a suspicion.
And he said, you know, I'll probably be next.
But don't worry, because I've signed the Panama Canal Treaty with Carter, so I've accomplished what I really came here to accomplish.
And less than three months later, almost the same thing happened to him as what happened to Roald Dose.
Now, you don't know if, so for example, you go meet with somebody and you come back and they don't do what you ask them to do.
Make the phone call back to the corporation you were working with and you say this is a no-go.
And the individuals you called, who were they?
Was it just simply your direct supervisor?
Were you talking to the CEO of that company?
Who was your communication with?
My direct supervisor was a senior vice president who became president.
So I was talking to the top management of my company and the call sounded like what hey, Bob?
They said no, he's not willing to budge.
Yeah I, yeah.
I mean, I would just try to couch it in terms of a little bit more color to it that maybe look a little better.
You know like hey, I just spent the last month miserably drinking rum drinks, you know and smoking cigars and hanging out with bikini clad women and still I failed, that kind of thing.
But yeah, basically that was it.
And then so they.
But but you didn't know the business model.
Like it's not like they told you.
The business model is if they say no, we're gonna go take a guy out.
You don't know that.
You just, or was that a almost like code read in the Marines?
You know the movie A Few Good Men, where everybody knows it's a code but it's not written anywhere.
But it's talked about amongst leaders.
Was it kind of like that?
Yeah, I think it was like that.
I knew, but I didn't know how many people that you met with right after you left they got killed.
Who didn't do a deal?
Was it those two guys?
Yeah, everybody else did the deal.
Everybody else did the deal.
Everybody else I met with did the deal.
So, but you never sat with Shah, you just partied with Shah.
You spent some time with the shah.
Yeah, did you do a deal with the shah or no?
Yeah, we did deals with the shah, but the shah now that.
So that was a different situation.
So the Shah didn't need to take out loans because he had money at that time.
He had money.
Just he just needed to give our oil companies permission to go in and take his oil, got it, and that's what we were working on.
And and you know the Shah was was very clever and that he sort of pitted Russia again, the Soviet Union, against us.
He said, well, you know, if you guys don't build me these cities, if you don't help me build, Russia's gonna do it.
So we were building huge transmission lines that went all the way from Uh Kirman down to Bandurabbas.
We, we were building the big military.
We actually were building the military base at Bandur Abbas, which now is is a thorn at our side.
You know it's it's it's controlling the Straits Of Hormuz, but we were building it basically as an American military base.
It was an Iranian military base, but where America would have a big presence and using the Shah's oil to pay our companies to make big profits building this military base.
What do you know were you?
Was there ever the concern of during that time it would be the 70s, right when you're having dealings with Shah, right?
What did you know about the consortium agreement of 1954?
Because that was the biggest uh challenge that four countries had?
Yeah, that they were not happy about the amount of power he was getting because he was going to give everybody.
It was a 25-year agreement.
They signed from 54 and it was coming up in 79 and I think the pm of France, Britain I want to say Germany and Carter obviously met in South or Central America to talk about this guy's getting a little bit too powerful and we've got to do something about getting rid of this guy.
Were you involved in the exodus of the shah or No?
No.
Okay.
No, in fact, the night before the bombs went off in, what was it, Shiraz or Israel, I was in the Hotel Intercontinental.
In Iran.
In Iran, in Tehran, at the bar, and I get a tap on the shoulder, and it's Farhard.
I haven't seen him since the night, although I saw him after the night.
The same guy that father is a general that will connect it to the CIA.
And Farhard says to me, We have a little bit of a chat, very brief.
And he says, I've got an airplane ticket for you tomorrow in Air France at 5 o'clock in the morning or something to fly to Rome with me.
And I said, no, no, no, I've got a meeting with the Minister of Finance tomorrow.
It's very important.
He said, no, no, you're coming with me.
And I said, I can't.
I've got this meeting.
And he looked at me in the eye and he said, you're coming with me or you may never come out of this country.
So I was on that.
And he said, my father's living in Rome.
I said, your father, he's the Shah's general.
What's he doing in Rome?
He said, he's no longer the Shah's general.
He resigned.
He's in Rome.
We're going to go stay with him.
And I left the next morning.
And then that next day is when the beginning of the end for the Shah began.
Why were you in Iran?
Was this 77 or 78?
This is 78.
78, 79.
It can't be 77.
78, 78, just before the 79 revolution.
Okay.
How long were you in Iran for?
Well, I was never there for more than a month at a time, but probably close to a year over 10 years.
So I had an office in Tehran.
I had an office in Tehran.
I had one in Panama.
You said 10 years?
He was there a month at a time, but he was there.
But here over a span of 10 years.
Wow.
So what was Iran like in the 70s, basically?
I loved it.
I loved it.
It was beautiful.
And I traveled all over from the Caspian down to the Straits of Hormuz, and I went down in the desert from Kirman down.
And it was just beautiful.
And Tehran was incredible.
I mean, it was so progressive.
You could sit out on what was called Pahlavi Avenue at that time, named after the Shah, these cafes.
And the Iranian women were, I mean, the mini skirts on Pahlavi Avenue were shorter than in Paris, if you can believe that.
And it was really, it was really struck by how impacted all that must have been when the mullahs took over, you know, and all that change.
It was shocking because it was.
So there was no Sharia law going on out there.
They're not in the full garb, nothing was going on.
No, The Shah wasn't for that.
So it was like the Paris of the Middle East at that point.
The Shah's, the princess, she was a model of beauty and sexuality.
Well, sensuality.
Excuse me, not openly.
You're getting choked up talking about her.
I get it, John.
Yeah, and she sponsored this major tennis tournament where they had all the biggest stars from the world coming and play tennis and an international film festival.
By the way, top three countries in tourism, the 70s.
You ready?
Yeah.
Burma, Cuba, Iran.
And it's crazy how those countries have completely done in 180.
Yeah, now Frank Sinatra would go perform there all the time.
Zahedi was dating Elizabeth Taylor.
Iran was like the place rich people went to.
Like where rich people go to today.
We're going to go to Dubai.
Way before there was Dubai, it was Tehran, Iran.
You'd go then.
You'd go to Bandal Pahlavi, which is a different port of Pahlavi by Caspian Sea, which you would have caviar as if it's just regular, you're having coffee.
So then the mullahs or whoever was basically saying, all right, this is enough's enough here.
Yeah.
What was that?
If you were there for 10 years, you must have, you probably don't speak the language, but you must have sensed some unease like, okay, this is what Pat is basically describing as the Paris of the Middle East, and those are rich people are going.
But there must be this undercurrent of people not digging this vibe, clearly.
Did you sense any of that?
What was that situation like?
That's what's shocking is no.
I didn't sense it.
I don't know that anybody sensed it.
I've become friends since then with Bob Baer.
You may know him, the CIA guy that the movie Siriana is based on.
He was deep undercover, spoke Farsi as well as Arabic.
I don't think he was even aware.
I mean, I don't get how difficult it was for us to understand what was going on.
I understand for me that all the information I got came from translators who worked for the Shah, you know, and they'd all been schooling.
So they're sweeping things under the rug.
Everything's fine.
Look this way.
Don't worry.
Have a drink.
Have some fun.
I would ask to interview some of the poor people and so on and so forth.
I thought I was at a translator because they didn't speak English.
And I don't know what was translated correctly.
And I know that the same is true around the world.
You get a lot of misinformation if you don't speak the language.
I find one of the reasons Latin America was so enlightening for me in Torrijos because I spoke Spanish.
But in Iran, no, we had no English.
Iran was the only country at the time, well, Saudi Arabia.
Well, our contract in Saudi Arabia is actually with the U.S. Treasury Department to build stuff in Saudi Arabia.
That's another story.
But I think Iran was the only country where my company did not require advanced payment for the work that we did.
We trusted Iran to pay its debts.
They had the money.
Yeah, and as a result, we lost millions of dollars when the Shah went down because they owed us a lot of money, which we'd never collected because we totally trusted them.
So it is shocking to me how little we understood.
Has any country taken a bigger 180 than Iran?
Because what he's basically saying.
Venezuela would be in the top five because Venezuela used to be a modern-day Iran.
You're talking about a country that has the most supply of oil.
Oil, natural resources, and it was a beautiful place to go to.
Next to Colombia, a great place.
Iran, and they also have beautiful women.
They also know how to party.
They also know how to put it together.
They also know how to have fun.
And Iran did so as well.
But Iran.
But Venezuela, I wouldn't put them on the same level as Iran.
Iran is working on nuclear missiles.
Yeah, but during that time, this guy had a deal originally.
British petroleum, right?
Was in Iran.
BP.
Prior to that, it was called the Anglo-something-something, you know, Persian oil company, you know.
So it was a—Britain had a chokehold on Iran.
And they pretty much ran everything in Iran.
Until Mossadegh, which was somebody that, you know, his, I don't know if you dealt with Mossadegh's issue.
I think other people thought that.
Mossadegh was the early 50s.
He was the early 50s.
You were still a kid.
Yeah, Mossadegh.
Mossadegh was a guy.
Mossadegh would have been the modern-day Bernie Sanders.
He was a socialist, and he wanted to take the oil money from Iran and give it to everybody.
And he didn't like the fact that the rich people were getting rich on all this stuff.
And he came in, and he kind of wanted to negotiate stuff with oil, but he wasn't strong enough to negotiate.
And then Zahedi, which, you know, you know who Zahidi is, he was the ambassador of the U.S. Zahadi was a very powerful man.
And Hoveda also.
Yeah, I would say that as well.
But Zahidi was, how would you describe Zahidi?
He was like, he dated Elizabeth Taylor.
Zahidi was like a few years ago.
He was a G.
A young Zahidi.
Put Ardej, a young.
No way, Tyler spells this right.
There's a Z, there's an H, there might be a lowercase Q. Zahadi, Tyler.
Can you get this right?
$100 if you spell this right on the $100.
$100, shit, I'll give you $1,000.
Zahadi.
A-R-D-E.
He went to Pornside.
A-R-D-S-H-I-R.
And then put Z-A-H-E-D-I.
Okay.
Young.
Okay, go to images.
Go to images.
I mean, this guy was like, the right to click on that one.
That one right there is fine.
He's a guy in the top left.
Maybe that's a bad picture for him.
But every, look who it is on the right.
Do you see what is on the right?
Beetle?
I can't really see this.
Who is that on the right?
Is that Barbara Streisand?
I think that's Barbara Streisand.
Yeah.
Zahadi, it's crazy.
What's the date on that article, Washington Post?
Can you click on it?
Flamboyant Iranian ambassador.
Okay.
died at 93.
What age is that?
Can you get rid of that?
No.
You can.
I'll go back and see when he just died because it has to be in the last 18 months.
And this was, who was he in Iran?
He's the guy you go through if you want to do any dealings with the Shah.
So this guy comes in.
He creates a campaign to get.
He's like the chief of staff, basically?
Let me tell you, this guy is the shot.
He is, he's a very important guy.
He gets rid of Mossadegh in a way.
I mean, a lot of people say he got rid of Mossadegh.
But can you see when he died?
I want to know when he died.
It has to be in the last 18 months.
He gets rid of Mossad.
Oh, really?
Shah comes in.
I was supposed to interview him.
He was sick when I was supposed to interview him.
See when he died.
I was supposed to, I think he was living in Switzerland or Sweden, something like that.
November 18th of last year.
Shit, that's, look at his birthday.
You know he's a special gun.
It was October 16th, two days apart.
He died four months ago.
I know.
He just died.
I'm telling you, I had a schedule to go to Switzerland.
Mario, we got on a call with the guy.
He sent me an autograph of his book saying I'm looking forward to the interview because we were going to have some interesting conversations together, but unfortunately he died.
Do you see who his wife was?
His wife stood up until 1964?
Shanaz Pahlavi.
Yeah, you know who that is?
Well, Pahlavi is pretty well known.
That's his sister, I think.
Yes, that's her Shah's family.
And, you know, he's lucky because Hoveda, who was prime minister and I got to know quite well, was executed.
He was shot by, we don't know whether it was a firing squad or whether somebody shot him just before he's.
I'm surprised he lived this long.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
He's lucky.
He made it because Hoveda, right after the revolution, was put on trial and found guilty of all kinds of things.
No question about it.
This Khomeini was after this guy for the longest time.
Everybody was like, this guy's not going to make it.
But he made it to 93.
Legit respect for him to make it that long.
By the way, this guy was the encyclopedia of everything that took place during that time.
If there's a guy that knew it was this guy.
Anyways, so the Shah all of a sudden went from being a 21-year-old kid that takes over Iran at 21 years old.
Think about this.
And his dad was a very feared man, very much of a dictator, strong, strong dictator.
Shah was a little bit more gentle.
He spoke seven languages.
He spoke French.
He spoke English.
He spoke better English than you and I speak English.
If you ever see him in interviews, you'll be blown away by this guy, the Shah.
So he changes everything in Iran.
He makes it, but he says, we got to get rid of the, what do you call it, the burqas that you put out.
You got to get rid of this.
You got to make it a little bit more free.
And then some of the more conservative Muslims were upset because he was thinking women are getting a little too loose, too comfortable with the way they're doing.
They're getting too much power.
He increased the age of women getting married from eight to 13 to 15.
And I'm telling you, that's the number, from eight.
A 55-year-old man prior to him could marry an eight-year-old girl.
And he raised it to 13, then to 15.
And I think now it's back down to 13 or some number like that in Iran.
So he made a lot of positive things, but he became a little too powerful.
And that scared the crap out of U.S. and Britain and France and Germany because they could no longer control him.
And when he became too powerful, that's when they said we got to figure out a way to hurt this guy.
And next thing you know, guys like him, maybe not him, but guys like him showed up and they totally ruined Iran because if it wasn't for economic hitmen like you, Johnny, it's all your fault.
You understand this?
This is the whole reason why I got you here today.
That's why I wrote a confession because I know it's true.
And incidentally, you know, the one country who left out of all that was China.
So Hoveda was really flirting with China at the time and using that in the United States' face, throwing it in our face.
Not only is the Soviet Union, but also we're seeing China is on the march here.
And the United States didn't even realize that China was doing what it was doing.
So in the 70s, what year is this?
Yes, in the 70s.
And so, you know, the Shah and all of his team were really, really sharp.
They were shrewd.
They were really shrewd.
Playing the Soviets against the Chinese, the Chinese against the Americans, the Americans against everybody.
And the French were in there and the English.
Everybody wanted a part of Iran.
Because of the oil?
Because of the oil, but also the location.
So Iran protects Europe from Russia, from the Soviet Union, basically.
Strategic alliance right there.
Everything.
And also the feeling was that if the Shah would be successful, then the rest of the Middle East would probably use him as a model, which we liked because he was a guy who, as Patrick said, was a very strong dictator.
But he also – Who was a strong dictator?
The father.
The father was.
Brutal.
I mean, the son feared him.
Yes.
Well, and I think.
So you referred to the Shah as a dictator when you guys did a speedrun.
You used that terminology to describe the Shah, did you not?
Yeah, the Shah was a dictator also.
As Patrick said, he was milder than his father.
Stop, John.
I've heard that.
I've heard.
This is called misinformation, folks.
Don't let this man fool you.
But why?
So you disagree with what he's saying?
Okay, let's define a dictator.
What's a dictator?
Well, somebody who doesn't have to be elected, basically.
Maybe an autocratic.
Well, he was an imperialist, which I agree.
Yes.
Imperialist is different than a dictator.
There's a big difference.
What is the difference?
What is the difference?
So what is Britain like?
Oh, it's a standoff.
It's a dictator standoff.
I'm going to get my bag out.
Would you say Britain's form of government is a dictator?
No.
Why not?
Because it's a parliamentary, it's a parliamentary republic.
What is the determination of the state?
You're saying when it was a monarchy?
You're saying a monarchy is a dictator.
So is the definition of a monarchy is a dictator?
No, certainly not in Britain.
It isn't.
Because the monarchy doesn't have control.
But in Iran, the monarchy was ruled.
So but a dictator is what?
A dictator says, if you don't do what I tell you, I kill you, right?
If you don't do what I tell you, I'm going to ruin your life.
Yeah, something's going to happen.
You tell me in America right now, God forbid, you know, Joe Rogan says something that disagree with, we're going to ruin your life.
It's just a different way of being a hitman.
Yeah, but in fact, the Shah did say that.
He said what?
He would ruin people's lives if they didn't agree with him.
It was a ⁇ at that time?
What do you call a CIA at that time?
What did you guys do?
Then you're a dictator?
I'm sorry.
We were supporting a dictator.
No, but you are the ultimate dictator.
So if we define them as a dictator, you are the ultimate dictator.
We tried to be.
That's what I'm saying.
We have to be very careful when we drop the name dictator because then that means FDR is a dictator.
Patrick, I love the way you talk about the important use of words.
I've watched an incredible video where you get into that.
I don't speak English.
It's my fifth language.
I'm trying to get better at this language.
I love it.
Can we pull up to the actual definition of a dictator?
Picture right next to it is going to be.
But go ahead.
So you call the Shah dictator.
Well, you're saying that the Shah was not a dictator.
No.
We have to define what a dictator is.
A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power.
Dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator by a small click.
The word originated as a title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the Republic of emergency.
But you said that the father of the Shah was a dictator.
But the brutal dictator.
Tell you, the father was, let me tell you, like the son never saw the father.
Like, this father never played with the son.
It's like, you're lucky to be around your dad.
You have to go learn.
And maybe once a month or once a year would see his dad.
The dad was feared, brutal, killer, my way or the highway.
And everybody, he got into it.
He got exiled, I think, once or twice.
They kicked him out once or twice.
And ultimately, the Shah kicked him out.
I mean, it wasn't, it was the CIA that came in and brought in the Shah.
But the Shah kind of replaced Mossadegh.
But Mossadegh had replaced the father.
True.
So listen, here's how.
Under Mossadegh, we had a true democracy.
Iran had a true democracy.
That was the Bernie Sanders of Iran.
That's what you're saying?
Mossadegh was a socialist, is who he was.
But he was elected by the people.
Yes.
He was elected by the people, but he was a socialist who there is no way he had the strong personality of a Bernie Sanders.
That was not him.
Mossadegh was, you know how he died?
He died living in a small village by himself, chilling.
Nobody bothered him for years.
True socialist.
True socialist.
But basically, he was under house arrest.
He was, but there's that little component.
He had no choice but to go.
He's capitalist stuck in a socialist little community.
First of all, first of all, you're talking about a guy.
You judge a country by the progress and the results that they're making.
What happens if a guy doesn't get results?
You can talk shit about a parent all you want until you see the kids end up becoming leaders.
You can call Belichick a dictator until they win six championships.
You can call Tom Brady as a quarterback a dictator because he's, you know, off the, you know, he's such a nice guy.
And then you talk to his opponents and Pittsburgh Steelers and they're like, dude, you guys don't know the Brady we know.
This is a dirty guy.
This is a competitor.
This is a psycho guy, right?
But he wins.
He got results.
So Iran under the Shah made a lot of progress.
That's all I'm saying.
The progress was made under him.
No question.
Make the point you were making when he asked the question.
What was the question?
You asked the question about the fact that, you know, what happened during, and you were talking about Hoveda and what he went through and at the time, because by the way, do you know what happened with Hoveda at the end?
Do you know why they killed him?
Do you know the cause for why they killed him?
Well, he was found guilty.
For what, though?
Do you know what he was found guilty for?
No.
You ready?
Craziest thing.
He was found guilty.
He was tried by the new established revolutionary court under Khomeini for waging war against God.
Oh, yeah, that whole thing.
That's right.
That's right.
Waging war against God.
Waging war.
Can you imagine if that's a very provable charge, right?
A very provable charge.
And they executed this guy at 60 years old.
I think he was 60, maybe like 60 or 7 years old.
Yeah, I think he was 60.
I think it's just very interesting because I'm an American.
I'm Jewish, quite frankly.
And I look at things from more of Middle Eastern relations a lot of times from the Israeli perspective.
But I just think it's very important because obviously Pat born in Iran, we cover Iranian topics, what's going on there, everything they're doing, nuclear, everything with that.
I just think it's very important to point out how different Iran was at one point and how quickly under certain regimes things can change.
It's almost night and day what you're describing of the rich places or people are coming all over the world.
The Elizabeth Taylors are hanging out there.
The Sinatra's performing.
And now it's like Pat can't even go visit the country if he wanted to.
That's how different Iran is.
And I just think that's important to highlight.
Yeah.
Well, if I go, I'm definitely taking the two of you for sure.
I don't know.
I'm not going with you.
I mean, nothing, I'll go anywhere in the world with you except Iran, bro.
I'll probably go to the bottom.
I'm not that crazy.
Are there any countries you are literally not allowed to go at this point of your career?
Well, I don't think I would be welcome in Iran at all.
I don't know whether I'd be allowed to go there or not, but I probably wouldn't be allowed to leave.
That's perhaps more important.
John Perkins, let me ask you another question.
You know, we've sat down with...
I'm not allowed to go to North Korea.
Well, nobody really was encouraged to go there.
But we've sat down with Mafia's.
Pat has done uber amount of interviews with names of names of names.
We all know that.
And I'm always wondering, like, do these guys fear for their life?
What kind of retribution?
What person out there is the son of someone that they killed?
They come back.
Do you fear for your life at all?
I mean, you're an economic hitman.
You've a self-described con man who has literally sat down with presidents, prime ministers, dictators.
Some of them haven't made it out of the, much longer out of the meeting.
So where do you stand on fear?
I don't mean to put you down, but you obviously didn't read the new confessions of an economic hitman, which was published in 2016, where I talk about I was poisoned and lost 70% of my large intestine to a hospital in New York City.
I was supposed to speak at the United Nations on a Tuesday, on a Tuesday.
I flew up to New York from Florida, where I lived at the time, on Monday, had lunch with this journalist, who it turns out probably was not a journalist.
And that night I lost a huge amount of blood in my body, was rushed to Lenox Hill Hospital, where eventually they took out 70% of my large intestine.
And a lot of the evidence points toward poison.
It was never, once again, never concluded because by the time we even suspected it, the part of my intestine had been removed, had been incinerated, which they do immediately as they built something out of you in a hospital.
But my life was threatened.
So when I started writing the book after I was an economic hitman, I started writing a book about my experiences and immediately got anonymous phone calls threatening my life and my infant daughter's life.
And you can imagine, Pat, you've got a child.
And at the same time, I was taken out to dinner by the president of Stone ⁇ Webster, a big consulting firm in Boston, been a competitor of my company's that I just left.
And he takes me out to dinner and he says, hey, you know, you've got a great resume.
You were chief economist at one of our competitors.
You had 50 people working for you.
We'd like to use your resume in our proposals.
You won't have to do any work for us, but just let us use your resume.
And I'm prepared to write a check to you tomorrow for $500,000, half a million dollars.
This is in the late 80s.
It was worth more than it is today.
It has millions at this point.
Yeah.
And then he says, just don't write the book.
So in fact, I'm getting the same treatment that I've been giving these presidents.
I'm being offered, you know, I'm now without a job.
I'm being offered half a million dollars in one hand.
Wow.
Do you deserve that treatment, though?
Well, does anybody deserve that kind of treatment?
I'm asking you.
I live a pretty moral life.
I don't fear for my life, but a lot of the stuff you're doing kind of, I assume, comes with the territory.
Well, I wanted to expose what I'd done and write the book.
But I took the money.
And I have to say, in my own defense, I didn't go out and buy a fan.
You did take the money.
I did take the money.
I didn't buy a Ferrari.
It's a good car.
I know a couple of guys that have one.
Yeah, I probably should have.
The way you said that, I'm probably never going to drive that Ferrari.
There was helicopters all around the house last night, and Jen was worried.
Maybe they were chasing after John.
I don't know.
He's around.
Yeah, so I actually took the money and went back to the Amazon where I'd been a Peace Corps volunteer and had such a huge impression on my life.
And I'd been reading how the Amazon is being destroyed.
So I go back to the Amazon and tell the indigenous people there, the Schwad, the Atra people I'd lived with, I want to come and help you save your forests.
And this started me off on a whole new career.
They said, well, if you want to save the forests, then don't come here and try to change us.
It's your oil companies, your lumber companies, your mining companies.
It's your dream in the North.
It's your dream of big buildings and Ferraris and other such things that are destroying these forests.
So change the dream of your people.
So I came back and formed a nonprofit called Dream Change and Pachamama Alliance.
I began writing books about this.
So, you know, I $500,000 to silence you was kind of the motto.
Yeah.
Is that what it was?
Don't say anything, we'll give you half a mil.
Don't write that book.
They're okay with me writing books on shamanism, indigenous culture.
They encourage that insurance.
Not on.
Not on what I'd done.
And then my contract was over by 9-11.
I'm in the Amazon with a group of people that I'm taking in to work with to save the forests.
9-11 happens.
I fly up to New York.
I go and stand and look down at that pit.
And I knew I had to write this book.
And I'm not saying there's a connection between what I did in 9-11, but it just struck me that I had to write this book.
And this time I decided that I wouldn't contact other economic hitmen and jackals as I'd been doing before.
So the word had gotten out, that's why I got the threats.
This time I decided I'd write the whole book completely in secret as a confession, not as an expose, but as a confession.
And I figured once I got it in the hands of publishers, it would be my insurance policy.
So I went ahead and did that and thought it was my insurance policy until I got poisoned.
And then that put a different position.
What year was this?
You said you got a half a million in 1980?
Yeah.
That's equivalent of $1.7 million today, which is not bad money that you got in 1980.
You have a million dollars.
Let me ask you, when you work for Chast T Maine, Chastity Main was a company that you were a chief economist for.
Is that like the equivalent of a Booz Allen Hamilton type of thing today, or who would you compare it to?
I don't know that there's anybody to compare it to.
We were very low profile.
We were always told don't talk to the press, don't let anybody know what you're doing.
We were a pretty powerful company, but really low profile.
We did a lot of engineering work as well as the economic work.
Is it still around or no?
No, it was bought out by Parsons, and I think it was bought out by somebody else, and the name disappeared.
Basically, everything disappeared.
So if you were to say the Chastity main company of 1970s today would be XYZ, who would that be?
It was a partnership.
I became a partner.
I don't know.
I really don't know.
But it's a consulting firm?
How would you describe it?
It was a consulting firm.
It's kind of like almost all of our work was either for the World Bank or the U.S. Treasury Department, State Department.
We did a lot of work for those kinds of organizations.
I hadn't watched Goodfellas for a while.
The other day on the flight back from Vegas, I watched Goodfellas.
And his girl is like, so, you know, why does everybody know you?
Why does everybody respect you?
What do you do?
He says, I do construction.
Kennedy's obviously.
But when you guys were asked, hey, what is it that you do?
Did you say, I'm a consultant?
What did you say you did?
Yeah, we're a consulting firm.
You're a consulting firm.
It's like the most vague terms.
That's the point.
I consult with business.
But you've got to realize when you look at sales.
Some of those companies today, the Booz Allen Hamilton and others, that Snowden used to work for and others used to work for, some of these companies are also consulting companies, right?
And they work directly with a lot of these major government organizations, NSA, et cetera, et cetera.
So it works.
Yeah, well, yeah.
So in answer to your question, I mean, General Electric, I've talked to people at General Electric and other companies that have these ties.
And so it's usually individuals.
So a lot of people in Charleston have no idea.
In fact, after I wrote the book, I got emails or letters or whatever it was in those days and calls from people who said, God, I always wondered what the heck was going on.
And now I understand.
So a lot of people totally in the dark about what's going on.
There's just a few that would be actually doing that kind of work.
Can I ask you a quick question just about your demeanor?
Don't feel no disrespect.
I see you and I'm thinking, this guy chills, hippie-out kind of dude.
You know, he's wearing like a Jaguar t-shirt.
Are you the same person you were in the 70s?
Meaning, were you a lot more stern and straightforward?
Because you seem like a pretty chill guy.
Have you changed significantly or has this always been you kind of casual and that was perfect for the role?
I'm a lot happier now.
So I think I have changed a lot.
Yeah, I was pretty uptight.
I always wore, of course, I wore suit and tie all the time, basically, except maybe when I was in some really hot climate where nobody else was wearing them.
I wanted to fit in.
But yeah, and I had up to 50 people working for me, and I was pretty strict with them.
You know, I always tried to come across as personable because that was part of my job.
Really, I say this not as a joke, but my job was to be a con artist.
It was to con countries into accepting these deals and to back them up with very fancy econometric reports and all kinds of statistics.
And I had guys that would do that, you know, just like you, you get guys over here that can tell you what $500,000 in 1980 is worth today.
Yeah, that's our conman statician over there.
But did you know you were a con man?
Meaning like, I'm obsessed with the movie, Catch Me If You Can, Leonardo DiCaprio.
What an amazing movie, right?
But he knew what he was doing.
He was making moves.
He was doing things.
He was printing out ideas, the whole thing.
He was cashing checks, forging.
Did you know that you were a con man or you were just kind of like, no, this is my job and I'm going to sell it and be a good company man?
Well, I knew that what I was supposed to, in the beginning, I thought what I was doing was the right thing.
I was convincing these countries to take these large loans that would increase their GDP.
Got it.
And I had been to the business school.
Everything revolves around GDP.
You know, if you can increase GDP, you've helped the country.
That was what we were taught.
So I believed that for a long time.
Yes, I was trying to talk presidents into doing this, but I thought I was talking them into doing what was best for their people.
And over time, so I only did that job for 10 years, but I'd say around the beginning of year five or so, I began to see that maybe the things aren't quite like they seem.
Partly because I'd been in the Peace Corps, I spoke Spanish, and to a large degree because of Torrijos and a few other people.
I write in the book about I started to date very seriously a Colombian woman in Colombia.
I had an office in Bogotá and one in Barranquilla, two offices in Colombia.
And she had a brother who was part of FARC, you know, the, you know, the, what do you call it?
The Colombian gorillas.
The Colombian gorillas, yeah.
And she, you know, she was, she was also putting a big buzz in my ear about, well, you've got to understand what America is really doing here.
And so I began to see this.
But once I began to understand the truth behind what I was doing, I didn't want to believe it.
And I think a lot of people are in this position today and always.
You know, I was making a lot of money.
I was flying first class around the world, meeting with presidents, hanging out with beautiful women and all kinds of them.
I was living my dream, the American dream, I thought.
So I really didn't, I wanted to buy into the sales job that I was getting.
And a couple of times I started, I tried to quit.
I went and talked to my boss and said, I think I'm going to quit, take a year or two off or do whatever.
I tried to be diplomatic about it.
They would send me to personnel, which now is human relations.
Human resources.
Human resources.
We got a great HR guy.
Shout out to Robert.
And what happened with that conversation?
Well, he'd sit there and stare at me and say, how could you possibly leave?
You had the best job in the world.
If you don't like what's going on exactly, you've changed it.
You're chief economist.
You're head of this department.
And stay here and work from the inside.
The same old line.
Was he selling you?
Yes.
Oh, absolutely.
I want to transition into some current events.
This is what I like to do.
So, you know, one of the videos I watched of you, there was a quote of John Adams, and it said, there are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation.
One is by the sword, and the other is by debt, okay?
Which is part of your formula on what you guys did, right?
It was a lot of debt, and you're forcing them to do whatever you want them to do, right?
Okay.
There's this country that is creating a lot of momentum.
I don't know if you've heard of it.
It's called China.
And China, U.S., owes to China $1,500,000, I think it's $1,050 billion is what we owe China.
$1.05 trillion in debt to China.
So if this quote is right, there are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation.
One is by the sword, the other is by debt.
Is America enslaved to China?
This is a really important question, Pat.
And it's the book I'm writing now.
It comes out in October.
It's called New Confessions of an Economic Hitman, Edition 3, China's Economic Hitman.
And I've been spending the last three or four years working on this book.
China owns the world now, pretty much.
And they do it under the guise of the new Silk Road, which is very appealing to countries in Africa and Latin America and the Middle East and all over that will become part of an international trading network.
Our economic hitmen were never smart enough to come up with that kind of a scenario.
They've got a great message.
And yes, I think the United States and China are incredibly interwoven.
And China's winning this battle, if you want to call it a battle.
But at the same time, the United States is also gaining a lot.
So our investors have over $100 billion invested in China.
You know, where would Microsoft be without China?
Where would Apple be?
Where would any of these high-tech companies be without China and its technology?
A third of all the international students in the United States today are Chinese.
They're here learning incredibly from us.
They're learning all about us.
We're not doing the same thing.
We're criticizing China, but we're not really sending many people over to really try to understand what's going on in China.
They don't let you.
Oh, yeah, they do.
No, they don't.
You can go and study in China.
Let me ask you a question.
When it comes down to media, we're open.
We tell the world about our problems.
China doesn't tell the world about their problems.
They're very much of a secrecy where we can't learn about them.
That's a misconception, Pat.
I hate to say it.
I taught in a business school in Shanghai, an NBA school.
It's constantly ranked as one of the top 10 in the world, along with Harvard and Stanford and so on.
The Chinese students there know everything about what's going on in the world.
Many of them studied here or in Europe.
I don't think you got what I said.
I said, we don't know about what China is doing because China doesn't want the world to know what they're doing.
Well, we can go there and learn.
They don't have open media.
They don't have a free press.
Well, they don't have a press.
There's no social media in China.
No, no, just a free press.
If you say one bad thing about the Xi, you're jackma.
You disappear for five months.
Everyone's scared shitless.
Their biggest influencer on their biggest platform that's a TikTok type of a model, she had like 50 million followers.
She disappeared just because she said one bad thing and supported the people.
Yeah, that's true within China.
But outside of China, there's a lot of information that's available.
What is the information that you think is not available?
What do you mean?
What is the information that's not available?
China says the unemployment is 2%.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe their unemployment is 2%?
I do.
You believe China.
I believe there are.
There are 0.5 million people living there.
Slave trade.
You're talking about people working in, you know, Uyghurs.
Yeah, the Uyghurs.
You're saying their unemployment is only 2%?
Come on, John.
I mean, you're counting me right now if that's what you want me to believe.
Well, I don't know whether it's 2%, but it's low.
It's very low.
It's low.
I mean, they're putting people to work tremendously.
They've brought close to 800 million people out of poverty in the last 30 years.
That's more than the whole rest of the world combined.
Which is true.
It's great for them.
And they've had part of that is 10% average annual growth in their economy for 2020.
It would have never happened without Nixon and USDO.
Yeah, that's true.
I don't know that.
Of course, the world knows that.
Well, Nixon went there, you mean?
Nixon is the reason why the trade opened up with China.
So it happened on the backs of America.
Well, you can say that, but you can also say that America has tremendously profited off China.
Because, as I said, our high-tech industries wouldn't be here without Chinese goods.
I don't know.
I think that's a strategically flawed strategy the U.S. took, which I would agree with that.
They rely too much on one country, and now they're paying a price for it.
Yeah.
So what I'm trying to say is there's a tremendous interrelationship between these two countries right now.
I don't think we can survive without China right now, and I don't think China can survive without us.
They need our market.
And the two countries have an incredible exchange of information and knowledge.
All of our high-tech companies, like Apple have offices, have facilities in China.
Their high-tech companies have facilities here.
There's a huge interchange in that.
And I think what we need to do, instead of just always looking at China as the bad guy, and yes, China's made a lot of mistakes.
They've done a lot of horrible things.
Yes, the Uyghurs, and what's going on in the South China Sea, what's going on in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
I'm not apologizing for China.
What I am saying is in this world today, these countries are very interdependent.
This is not like the Soviet Union in the United States.
We were never interdependent.
We did not rely on the Soviet Union for technology or anything else.
The Soviet Union never offered the world anything the world really wanted.
The Soviet Union was powerful because it had nuclear weapons.
That's it.
That's an eighth of China's economy, by the way.
Right.
That's Russia today.
Yeah, the Soviet Union.
But, you know, I knew a lot of students in Latin America who were Marxists, and they would go to school in Russia.
But they didn't consider Russia to be Marxist.
They considered Russia to be Stalinist.
And they did not want Ecuador or Peru or Argentina to have any government like the Soviet Union.
They did not want to have the economy of the Soviet Union.
They do want the economy that China has.
They want to see the kind of growth that China has demonstrated to the world that it can do.
From 1973 until now, China's had incredible economic growth.
You know what's happened in the United States?
We've gone from 60% of the population being in the middle class to 50%.
We have not had an increase in average wage when you account for inflation since 1973.
Why do you think that is?
Terrible economic approach in our country.
Terrible what?
It's our economic system in this country.
I don't think it's economical.
What do you think it is?
You think it's economical.
So you talked about your three guys that are the richest people that have half the money, right, that you talk about.
Okay.
How do you think they got done?
How do you think they got there?
Well, you can't generalize.
I mean, there's many different things.
So how did they do it?
Just give me your idea.
How do you think they got there?
How do you become that wealthy in America?
If I knew, I'd probably be one of them, but I don't.
No, what I'm saying is...
You probably know because you're up there.
You tell me.
I'm asking you because you are.
I don't know.
I don't know how they got there.
But what I do know is that.
But what I do know, Pat, is that they're not being taxed for it and their companies are using infrastructure.
They're using all of us.
Stop, John.
That argument you're going to lose.
To who?
Who's not being taxed for it?
Do you know who's paid the most taxes in the history of America, an individual?
You know who's paid the most taxes ever in the history of America?
No.
Who?
I said I was a little bit more.
It's a guy named Elon Musk.
You know what he paid this year?
No.
$11 billion.
And what percentage of that was versus his income?
What was his tax?
What was his tax?
It's not about his taxes.
He didn't take income.
If he takes income, he pays taxes on it.
It's on capital gains.
Yeah, so that's capital gains.
But the point is, to make, to pay that much taxes, that's more than every single U.S. president in the history of America combined in their lifetime.
Presidents don't make much money.
Okay, so American presidents don't make much money.
Go take every congressman, every senator, every president, every governor combine all of their taxes in their lifetime.
This guy paid more in one year.
And guys like you and guys like others in politics, bash this guy.
You know how much he gave to charity yesterday?
How much do you think he gave to charity yesterday?
Charity.
I don't really.
$6 billion.
So what's the big whoopee?
But what the point is— What's $6 billion doing?
I mean— I mean, how much is he taking out of this?
No, no, but the point is the government who says, give us more taxes, and we do, and we give them more taxes, we see nothing.
And there's zero accountability.
The difference is, and Elon Musk is publicly scrutinized constantly because there is a form of accountability in the free market, free enterprise.
There is zero accountability with the government.
If I go to TSA for customer service, they treat me like shit.
If I go to CLEAR, they treat me royally.
CLEAR is a free market company.
TSA is a government organization.
They flat out disrespect you at TSA.
They don't at CLEAR.
So the American people are sitting there saying, Johnny, we'll give more money to the government.
Just show us what the hell you're doing with it.
Because you haven't proven yourself.
Every time you tell us, give us more money, raise taxes, raise taxes, raise taxes.
We don't see any results.
So what do you want me to do at this point?
So Pat, tell me then, why has there been no real increase in wages in the real average wage in this country since 1973?
Why has the middle class gone from 60% of the population to 50%?
Why did all the 200 or 400 and however many billionaires we've got now?
What is it?
It's 742, I think, or something like that.
Billionaires made, I can't remember the numbers now, but 70% more than they had during the pandemic.
Why?
And you want me to give you the answer?
I'll give you the answer.
I'll give you the answer.
You ready?
Yeah.
Okay.
Ever wonder why politicians never spent any of their time coming out with programs to educate low- and middle-income families on how to get out of debt?
Ever wonder why politicians don't want low- and middle-income families to become wealthy and make money?
Do you ever wonder, maybe these guys don't want you to be an upper class.
Maybe they want to keep you at low income.
Maybe they want to keep you at middle income.
Why?
Because if they do, every two to four years when they need your vote, they're going to get your vote.
When's the last time you saw a governor, a senator, a congressman emphasize education to adults on how money works?
Let me go to another step with you here.
I totally agree with you instantly on all of this.
But I'll go to another part.
I'll go to another part.
But you're not really hitting on the point.
I'm going to get to the next point here because your point was that 70% of their net worth increased in the last 24 months.
No problem.
Let's talk about that.
How much money do we print the last 24 months?
What's the dollar amount?
No idea.
Over 5 trillion.
Over 5 trillion, more than 40% of all the money in history of America has been printed in the last 24 months, okay?
Now they take that money and they send, what do you call it, all these money they send to people, stimulus checks to people.
The people that are getting the money with stimulus checks, what do you think they're doing with their money?
Well, for one thing, they brought a lot of kids out of poverty.
No, they didn't.
Yes, they did.
Then the statistics would have gone up.
But what do you think they do with that money?
What do you think they do with that money?
You tell me.
Well, you tell me what they do with that money.
If I'm accustomed to spending money and I'm spending the money buying stuff, I buy more stuff.
And when you buy more stuff, who's running those companies that sell more stuff?
The people at the top.
So the money always flows to the top.
So essentially, the politicians that you want to increase the taxes for, they're the reason why billionaires increased their net worth 70% the last two years.
There's a couple different things going on.
It's not a blanket statement.
And this is where I want to get to the heart of it because the facts support that, yes, people have spent a lot more money, but they've also, more people have gotten out of debt.
This is what happens when you print $5 trillion.
There's options.
People have saved a lot more.
People have, because with unemployment and stimulus checks, they've had a lot more in their bank accounts.
They paid off debt.
I think this is the first time in decades that debt, basically personal debt decreased since the pandemic.
So it's not just a blanket statement.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, Adam.
You can't say something like that.
No, no, you can't say something like that.
Okay.
So go to where you just went.
I'm just saying that there's, not everyone spent all their money.
Some people saved.
Some people got out of debt.
But this is what happens when you sprint $5 trillion.
Let's talk about that.
Guys, like, you realize if I give you, if I have $100 right now, I give it to you.
Did that $100 disappear?
No, at the end of the day, the money flowed to the top.
But let me go a little bit further.
If I give you $100, did that money disappear?
No, it did not.
The money just transferred to who?
To you.
If you give that $100 to him, did the money disappear?
No, it just went to him.
If the money goes from him to him, did that money disappear?
That $100 is still out there, right?
It just not in my hand, not in your hand, not in his hand.
It's now in his hands, right?
Okay, fine.
That $5 trillion that we put in the economy, where does that $5 trillion go to?
So, oh my God, I paid so many people's credit cards in college debt.
Really?
Where did that $5 trillion go to?
But where did that $5 trillion?
It's gone everywhere.
It's gone all of it, circulated all over the economy.
A lot of it, a lot of it, a lot of it, a lot of it went to the stock market.
And that goes to basically where Elon was.
It's bigger than that, guys.
It's bigger than that.
This guy is sitting here just gave this strategy on how to ruin a nation.
Who gives a shit where that $5 trillion went to?
Here's what a $5 trillion, 100% went to.
To our debt.
To our debt.
That $5 trillion is debt.
Which on one side of the past?
Do you realize who's the speaker today?
Our guest today is John Perkins, economic hitman, where the business philosophy is what?
We can kill him with the sword or debt.
And we're like, oh, but we paid off college debt.
Oh, but we paid off credit card.
Oh, but we bought more Bitcoin.
Oh, but we bought more NFTs.
Oh, but we didn't.
No.
Bullshit.
The country you love is officially enslaved to others.
And what do we have to do with this money?
They have to get that money from somewhere.
So do we print some more money to make, oh, let's help the poor even more.
This is not the strategy.
I'd love nothing more.
This is a 99-cent store guy.
I'm a guy.
My parents got a divorce.
I didn't have any money when we grew up.
I'm a guy that went to the military.
I was going to do military for 40 years.
If a guy didn't sit there and say, hey, you need to kind of figure out how money works, where the hell am I today?
I'm just another guy that's sitting there saying, can you please send us more stimulus checks?
This is not the right strategy.
We want the same mission to help middle-income median income to go higher.
But the way to do it isn't to send more money to people.
That is not the strategy because that keeps hurting, that keeps validating your business model.
When you went and sat down with people like the Guatemala guy, Jacopo Guzman, when you sat down with Ecuador, Aguilera, Jaime Aguilera, when you went and sat down with Panama, Omar Torrios, when you went and sat down with Venezuela, all this stuff, it just validates the formula works.
Also, what are you saying?
It's good to have a country where three individuals have as much wealth as half the population.
I'd call that an oligarchy.
What would you call it?
I'd really like to know.
What do you think?
Is that a democracy?
Do you like sports?
Some.
Which sport do you like?
Soccer.
Soccer?
Okay.
Hockey.
You like hockey?
Who's your favorite hockey player?
I haven't been following this year, actually.
Who's the greatest hockey player of all time?
Gretzky.
Is it fair that he scored more assists and goals than anybody else by a mile?
That's a shame, John.
I'm appalled that we allow somebody to beat number two by so much with goals and assists.
He should have never beat the greatest hockey player prior to him by so much.
That is embarrassing.
We should limit how much he should have beat second place because we should give more minutes to the other guy because, God forbid, Wayne Gretzky, why are you getting so many minutes?
We shouldn't let him play so much.
We shouldn't have these success stories.
Let's keep people less.
Let's only beat the record by one goal, not 600 goals.
So you're saying that the American economy is a sports game.
Yes, it is.
You're playing again.
Capitalism is a game.
So socialism.
The difference is capitalism, you control the game based on what you do.
So you think what the United States has today is capitalism.
With a touch of social programs.
What we have is predatory capitalism or oligarchic capitalism.
It is not true capitalism.
Because true capitalism, true capitalism, the definition of capitalism is that the means of production, manufacturing and commerce are not owned by the government.
They're owned by individuals.
You're going to lose this argument when you go.
Keep going.
We'll see about that.
Go for it.
I'm enjoying this.
Go ahead.
I am too.
I am too.
None that I think I'd have an argument like this with an Imbranian.
This is why I invite you back because I enjoy our conversation.
So let me continue.
So in our form of capitalism, the government does not own individual enterprises.
But the individual enterprise owners own the government.
So when you go and you talk about our politicians and what they're doing and so forth, that's because they're owned by the oligarchy.
That's because they're owned by the billions.
The person's the problem.
So who's the problem?
The system's the problem.
The fact that corporations and the corporation owners can put so much money into this issue.
This is what they call crony capitalism.
That's what they call oligarchy.
So guess what?
So guess what?
So then this goes to one thing.
So you think we should have lobbyists?
Not on the lobbyists.
Right now we have 300 lobbyists to every member of Congress.
You think that's a good thing?
No.
You think we should have lobbyists, period?
I think you can have middlemen, but not lobbyists that are so totally self-defense.
How many people do you see senators and congressmen retire and become lobbyists making $6 million a year?
A lot.
Okay, so what do you think happens there?
Why do we have that?
Because that's part of the bribery.
That's part of the corruption system.
We shouldn't have that.
I agree.
Okay, then.
So we have one area that we agree with.
We agree that the reason why these billionaires can get away with that is because they have lobbyists that they're paying money.
And these senators and congressmen, if you got a half a million dollars to stay quiet in 1980, what the hell do you think they're getting behind closed doors?
Okay?
If you got a half a million dollars to stay quiet in 1980, what do you think these senators and congressmen are getting wallets and here's $800,000?
Do me a favor.
Can you make sure you hurt the other small business owners so I can whoop his ass?
I've actually heard that a congressman can be bought for $10,000.
I thought it was $100,000.
Can you come on your side?
It's cheaper today.
You can come on your side, but if you really wanted to push for you, then it's $100,000.
I've heard that's the $100,000 number, but I don't think that's a good system, though.
I don't either.
Okay, so we're on the same page with that, but it's not the fault of, for example, if I, so it's the fault of whoever created those laws, not the fault of the capitalists.
If you allow players to use steroids, if you allow players to use steroids and it's legal, guess what?
That's the law.
If you don't, it's not the law.
You know, the MLB is no longer testing for steroids.
Well, what just happened with the Russian skater?
She's not allowed to use steroids, but she did, and she's been forgiven for it.
I think.
I guess they're still struggling with that.
Tell me how many people are watching the Olympics today.
You tell me.
Are you watching it?
I think I'm in it.
The only person I know that's watching it is my dad, and he's watching this curling.
I'm like, dad, what the hell are you watching?
And they're watching this curling game that's going on.
But the point I'm trying to make to you is it ain't the capitalist, it's the lawmaker.
Well, but the capitalists are the only lawmaker.
No, because they are for sale.
If they weren't for sale, this wouldn't be the case.
But why are they for sale?
Who do you blame?
So do you blame the prostitute or the John?
The prostitute has a choice not to be a prostitute.
John has a choice not to be a John.
No, no, but wait a minute.
If the prostitute chooses not to be a prostitute, then John can't find a prostitute.
And the prostitute goes broke because she's got no other job.
No, she'll find a different way to make her money.
That's on her.
Maybe.
Maybe, no, no, it's not maybe.
That's not how life works.
No way.
That's not how life works.
Let me explain to you how life works.
And you know this is how life works.
You tell a kid, listen, if you don't figure out a way to pay rent, you've got to kind of figure out what you're going to do.
If you're going to live here and rent from me, you're 22 years old, you've got to kind of pay $600 a month.
No, you don't get a job.
You're out of luck.
You've got to go live with your friends.
You're a terrible dad.
Fine.
You're right.
I'm a terrible dad.
You're a terrible renter.
You never pay rent.
What do I'm going to do with you?
Go figure life out.
That kid leaves.
He does some stuff that he wants to retaliate against that, smokes we does a lit of coke, goes out there, does ecstasy, does everything he can to trash his dad.
He's going to eventually get a job.
And if he doesn't get a job and ruins his life, the father couldn't have done anything about that in the first place.
That's on the kid.
The kid has to eventually figure out a way to survive.
So that prostitute will figure out a way to make money.
She doesn't have to go that route.
Capitalism works.
It's the laws that get people to do things that hurt others because the laws allowed that to happen.
So let's look at a little bit of American history.
I agree that capitalism works.
Sure.
But at the end of the American Revolution, the Continental Congress and what became the Congress were very concerned because the Revolution was really about the East India Company.
It was more than the Crown, but the Crown was very dependent on the East India Company, Crown of England.
And so they passed a law that said nobody could get a corporate license, a corporate charter, unless they could prove that they're going to serve a public interest.
And charters lasted for only 10 years.
At the end of the 10 years, you had to go back and prove that, demonstrate that you had served a public interest, and then you could maybe get another charter.
Also in there was no company could buy another company or sell itself to another company.
Those laws were there to protect us against corporate power because the founders were very concerned about corporate power because of the East India Company.
Those laws continued for 100 years, almost about 100 years, until John D. Rockefeller came along and he wanted to drill for oil in New Jersey and Delaware.
And he says, you know, I can't drill for oil.
I can't have it 10 years.
It takes a lot longer to drill for oil.
I've got to be able to buy out these other companies that are competing with me.
It's the only way we can get oil.
So he went to the legislature of New Jersey first and later Delaware.
And he said, you know, if you change the law so that I can have unlimited powers, I'll give a lot of campaign money to you legislators for that.
And that has continued, and it's grown and grown and grown to the point where corporations and their owners have so much power over our politicians.
Now, we can argue all you want about the prostitute and the John.
We can argue about it.
Who's at fault?
Is it the politicians or is it the people that are bribing the politicians, basically, that are offering them these incredibly lucrative positions when they leave, or even while they're there, campaign financing?
And then when they leave, if you don't get elected, we'll give you a great job as a lobbyist.
Or if you did get elected when you want to retire, you're going to have a great job.
Who's to blame for that?
Yeah, I tell you, it's the law creator, the person that creates the laws.
It's not the person that bribes the law.
No, you don't have to take the bribe.
No, I did that, though, in other countries.
And I took the bribe myself.
So I got to tell you, sometimes you don't feel like you really got a choice.
Fine.
Let's just say sometimes you really don't think you have a choice.
Your story is an extreme story when somebody comes to you and tells you it's your life and you have an infant child at that time.
So I totally get the threat that you are in a situation like that.
Let me go to a different angle with you in the story here.
Let's go a completely different area and see what angle you would take with it.
Okay.
Today, let's talk about today, with what's going on with Ukraine and Russia.
On one end, Biden's talking about the fact that, you know, Russia's going to attack Ukraine.
Russia's going to attack Ukraine.
Russia's going to attack Ukraine.
Ukraine prime minister is like, stop saying that, man.
You're scared the hell out of my people.
What does the matter with you?
On a call to Biden.
Okay.
So when I saw that going on, the first person I thought about was you.
I'm not kidding with you.
First person I thought about was you.
I'm thinking of going to Ukraine, actually.
Okay.
So then maybe you're going there to do some business.
So first person I thought about was you.
I said, I wonder how John reads this story.
The day-to-day guy reads this story saying, oh my gosh, Russia's going to go in there and take whatever they want from Ukraine and it's going to suck.
And then, you know, maybe somebody that's a little bit more educated, that's complete something else.
Maybe somebody else that's a little bit more educated and follows news a little bit more and knows, you know, well, you know, here's what's really going on over there.
And, you know, maybe somebody that's a little bit skeptical with, you know, Biden talking about the fact that he had dealings with Ukraine and he's made money from Ukraine and a big guy and all that other stuff.
I said, I wonder how John looks at this.
Because I know, John, politically, which way you lean.
I know which way you're politically in.
But I also know, as much as whatever side I lean politically, left, right, center, registered independent, I still sit there and say, huh, would Trump have contacted Russia to help him with the election?
What chances do I think that would happen?
Huh.
That's pretty interesting because everyone's talking about it now.
And this Adam guy shift made it.
There is certain, you know, no question about it.
There's evidence that there was collusion with Russia.
Like, oh, shit, he just said it.
Damn.
And then this and this and that.
And then the dossier came out.
It was set up by Hillary Clinton, 35 million bucks.
And then Durham comes back with the investigation.
Mueller spent $40 million.
This guy only needed $3 million.
Oh, shit.
It was all Hillary the entire time.
She's the mastermind behind it.
What a freaking dirty way of doing it.
So you do to the other person and you tell the world that that person is doing what you're doing to them.
They're doing it to you.
You really are a gun man at the highest level.
So from your end, give us all potential scenarios of what's going on with Ukraine, Russia.
Let's see if you're going to be open about it instead of maybe being selective and just giving us the side that you want to give us.
Don't think that's going on there.
I just came from NASA in the Bahamas where I was teaching a course.
NASA was the pirate capital of the world at one time, Pirate Republic.
But you know, the pirates never, they didn't want to attack other ships, particularly.
Why they had that big flag with the skeleton crossbow?
It scared the shit out of the ships that were coming up.
And most of the ships knew that if they just gave up, they would have to lose whatever the pirates wanted that was on their ship, but nobody would be killed.
It was the flag, the flag, the fear.
The pirates would appear on the deck semi-naked or maybe naked, looking very fierce, and so on.
I think Russia is doing that on Ukraine.
I think Russia is standing on the edge of Ukraine waving that Jolly Roger skull and crossbow flag.
And it's trying to negotiate.
It does not want Ukraine to become part of NATO.
It's trying desperately to bring people.
It's been very successful, incidentally.
And now the heads of many countries are talking to Putin.
They wouldn't have before.
So in a way, they're getting their way in terms of getting everybody to talk to them.
The United States is getting all upset and involved in it.
And certainly Biden is wanting to look very strong.
It's an election year, and he's wanting to look strong.
So he's making it sound as though Russia is absolutely going to attack Ukraine.
Who knows?
But I don't, I was speaking at a conference in Russia in 2017 along with Putin.
We were both speaking at the conference.
I got to know his top economic advisor, Sergei Golashov, very well.
He and I flew to Kazakhstan together and spoke there.
You know, the sense I got is that Putin is a very shrewd operator.
He's very, very clever.
And he knows the world pretty well.
And so he's trying to get whatever he can out of this.
He's using the leverage of his troops on the border to get talked with all kinds of people, to get recognized.
He loves to be on the front page.
He's getting on the front page a lot.
Will he actually attack Ukraine or not?
I have no idea.
But I do know that we are, the United States and many other countries are feeding into his hands.
You don't think there's anything else going on there that's politics behind closed doors that we don't know about?
Oh, there's lots of stories behind the stories for sure.
Any potential, like, what if it could be maybe this, it could be this, it could be that.
What are some things you would speculate if somebody hired you to investigate this?
Well, I think it could be part of it is that Putin is trying very hard to win friends with China.
He sees that China is going to probably control a third of the world's economy in the next 10 years.
That's the way it's headed.
Russia is a country that's kind of left out at the moment.
You've got China and the United States are at center stage right now.
They're duking it out, so to speak.
And Russia's left on the outside.
So Putin's struggling very hard to get back in there.
So you think that's the only thing?
You think the only thing is the fact that Putin is trying to get back in there and he's trying to get closer to China?
You don't think there's anything else that's going on that's skeptical from our end?
Well, you obviously have some idea about that.
I'd like to ask you.
I actually don't.
I don't have anything.
I'm asking you because you're the guy.
For example, if I talk to a divorce attorney and I'll say, hey, give me the 10 reasons why people get a divorce.
A divorce attorney's done hundreds of divorces.
He's going to be like, well, number one at the top is infidelity.
Okay.
Number two, you know, their high school sweetheart, so they did it because she got pregnant early and he had to make it look good and say, okay.
Number three is because he used to be broke, now he's famous and he's the number four.
The divorce attorney is going to be able to speculate all these different reasons, right, that people get a divorce.
I'm asking the economic hitman to say why would something like this take place.
Let me go to a different level.
I want you to be creative because I know you're very creative.
Your strength is being very, very creative, John.
If, let's just say you took a half a million dollars from the people that met with you at, you know, in 1.7.
That's a lot of money, right?
You didn't buy Farage, by the way.
Good for you.
Should have.
You should have.
Probably would have been worth 30 million today if you would have bought one.
But let's just say you got a call from somebody at the U.S. government.
And they say, John, forget about the $1.7 million.
We'll double that.
And they represent a consulting firm.
And it's consulting firms.
We can call it JBN Associates, whatever you want to call it.
And their specialty is construction.
And they call you, they say, hey, John.
We'll give you $3.4 million.
There's a guy that's a podcaster we cannot stand.
We would love anything to destroy this guy and get him off air.
If you pull it off, we'll give you the $1.7 million up front.
We'll give you another $1.7 million once you get him off.
How would you do it?
So if you were offered a number like that, which is kind of cool, you can go to the Amazon and buy three alligators.
You can go freaking, I don't know, you can do a lot of shit with that, right?
How would you, I mean, obviously nothing like this is going on in America today.
I'm just saying, if there was a podcaster that's a very big podcaster and he gets more views than CNN, Fox, MSNBC combined per week.
Let's just say there's a guy like that out there.
Let's not happen, but let's just say this.
How would you destroy this guy's life if somebody offered you $3.4 million to get him off air?
How would you do it?
Well, I'd probably, first of all, want to appear on a show and make him look like he doesn't really know what he's talking about.
So you would go on his show.
That would be a start.
Yeah.
And then I'd probably let the air out of the tires of this Ferrari.
If he had one, let's assume that this guy had a Ferrari.
This guy doesn't have a Ferrari.
He drives a Dodge Ramp.
Well, that I would buy him a Ferrari.
You would buy him a Ferrari.
I don't think he cares about a Ferrari.
But honestly, what do you do to this guy?
Okay, because we're living in a time where I think your model is not as effective today as it was 50 years ago.
Absolutely.
But it is effective in different ways because today it's not an economic.
It may be a character assassination.
So how would you reward it?
So today what you do is social media.
So what do you do?
You hire some really good social media people to go after this guy and create all kinds of lies about him, some of them based on truth.
A little bit of truth here.
A little bit of manipulation.
A little bit of manipulation of the truth, yeah.
And you go after him in whatever way you can.
And it would depend on the guy.
Can you get him to really expose himself?
Can you get him to get really angry?
I mean, what would you do?
Everybody loves him.
He's loved by all his followers.
We love him.
Maybe you can get him to use one of the words that we're not supposed to use anymore on the internet.
That's one way to do it.
Yeah, get him.
But what if you find that and then the opposition comes back and says, well, Howard Stern said this and Joe Biden used the word and this person used the word.
So then what's your next move if that happens?
What do you do then?
What do you do then, John?
I need your help, John.
You're the economic kid, man.
I'm trying to figure this puzzle out and I'm leaning on you.
I don't want to have your level of education.
I know the guys.
You don't take care of them.
But I think ultimately the point that you're making at is that whatever John's answers are, they are what they are, but these conversations are taking place.
No, that's what you're basically saying.
Adam, what I'm trying, on a serious note, I am relying on his ability to be creative to tell us if somebody were to do something like that, how you go about doing it.
That's what I'm trying to get from John.
And I don't know if John's giving us the answer.
I think John's playing it safe right now.
Well, no, I think John doesn't know because I've been out of this business for a long time.
You're pretty shrinked.
I'm a writer now.
But I mean, no, seriously, but I do know that today character assassination is such an amazing thing.
And there's people that specialize in it.
I guess truly, if I were in that position, I would hire one of those people to do whatever they do.
If I really wanted to do that.
But I think, you know what?
I think beyond all that, I would really have to look at why am I trying to do this?
Money.
You said some people are, you can be bought.
Yeah, but.
$3.4 million.
I'm trying to get somebody to call you and give you that $3.4 million if you can do this.
Yeah, but maybe I don't want to, maybe the money isn't worth it to me anymore.
And maybe, what's the point?
Why?
I guess I'd have to ask, why do we want to get this guy off the air?
You want to get this guy off the air?
Because he puts people on that he interviews that call you out and expose you.
And the people in power are sick of it because all the manipulation about masks and all this hypocrisy where Mayor Garcetti says, hey, whenever I take pictures without a mask, I'm going to hold my breath.
I literally peeped my pants when he said that in an interview.
And then he's at the Super Bowl without a mask on ever.
And all these celebrities that say we should put masks on, kids, the next day are going to have to wear masks, but they don't.
And this guy talks about it, and he's kind of undermining the White House.
And that's not cool.
So we have to figure out a way to silence this guy.
Isn't that part of democracy?
But not today, because today is all about censorship and character assassination.
It's a business model that's worked very well the last two decades.
I don't know if you've been following it.
It's a very effective strategy.
Yes, it is an effective strategy.
Yeah.
But I know we would like to have a democracy where you and I can talk, where you can go to your podcast and say, Pat's full of shit.
And I think Patrick is linked to the Shaw, whatever you want to talk about.
I mean, great.
And let people decide and say, I agree with John.
And I think the Jaguars real representation of honesty.
And I don't like Pat, what he has to say.
But they have to make that decision.
Right.
I'm Team Tiger.
You're Team Jaguar.
Slightly different.
Let me ask you a different question, though.
Here's a different question.
This is your world.
You can't tell me you don't know, John.
You can't play the, oh, I'm not following that story.
Okay, so.
Pat, Pat, Pat.
I just recently heard you talking about how you never make promises.
You never say you can do something if you don't follow through on it.
Well, I am not.
I'm going to play your game.
I respect your integrity.
I agree completely with you that you don't offer something that you can't deliver.
You don't want.
This is why I know you like Omar Torrijos as much as you do.
I know you like him as much as you do.
So let me read you what just happened this week.
I don't know if you're following it or not.
No one, I'm sure you're not.
But some stuff's been happening this week.
Some crazy stuff happened this week.
I've been in the Bahamas.
That's your perfect alibi, John.
Perfect alibi event.
And you know, and I want you to know that the Shaw is a bad thing.
I was teaching in the Bahamas at a Hindu ashram.
So you can imagine how much news I was getting there.
You can't even get a shoe.
You can't even get a cup of coffee there.
I'm sure you're not following this.
So let me read this story.
Let me read this story.
Let me read this story.
Clinton campaign paid to infiltrate Trump Tower, White House servers, to link Trump to Russia.
Now, who would do such a thing?
Because she's a very, you know, she's always been known as a sweetheart.
So lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to infiltrate servers belonging to Trump Tower and later the White House in order to establish an inference and narrative to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia filing from special counsel John Durham says.
And for the last three, four years.
This is the Durham connection.
Let me go.
And for the last four years, everybody's been saying Durham's going to find nothing.
Durham's going to find nothing.
Durham's going to find nothing.
Well, he did, right?
Durham also writes that during former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman's trial, the government will establish that among the internet data tech executive one and his associate exploited was domain name system, DNS, internet traffic pertaining to a particular health care provider, Trump Tower, Donald Trump Central Park West Department building, and the executive office of the President of the United States.
So John Durham is saying that Hillary Clinton essentially hired a company to have a link to Russia, even though he wasn't doing it, to say he is.
It's a setup.
Now, as a person who's a former economic hitman like yourself, who you've gone and you've sat down with prime ministers and you've said, if you don't do this, things are not going to be good for you.
Can you see anybody deceptive enough in politics that would ever do such a thing to our former president Donald Trump?
Absolutely not.
We have a clean system here in the United States.
Why would we even consider that anybody would do something so dastardly?
Yeah, I figured you're going to say that because the level of nobility in our politicians is just incredible, right?
Semi-sane status.
Now, here's what I did.
I still want to get your thoughts on this.
I want you to type in Durham, what do you want to put, Durham investigation, and then put Durham investigation.
And that's it.
That's all I want you to put.
Take the rest of it out.
And then go to news.
Type in news.
Okay, so watch this.
Why does it do that way?
Go back to all.
Go back to all at the top.
All right, can you make it a little bit bigger so we can read everyone how they titled it?
So your favorite word CNN uses, the same word they use against you.
Alleges.
Special Counsel Durham alleges Clinton campaign lawyer used data to raise, if you can click on that so I can read the rest of the title, to raise suspicions about Trump.
Now go back and let's read the next title.
The next one is from New York Post.
Ex-DNI Ratcliffe expects more indictments in Durham's RussiaGate probe.
Fox News says Clinton campaign paid to infiltrate Trump Tower, White House service linked to Trump.
The Hill, Durham alleges cyber analysis exploited access to Trump White House.
New York Times, court filing started a fewer in right-wing outlets, but their narrative is off track.
Can you go to the Wall Street Journal, which is an independent source that, you know, just happened, WS, there you go.
Trump really was spied on.
Okay, and people trust Wall Street Journal because it's typically in the center.
That's an opinion piece.
Yeah, I know it is an opinion piece.
I read that as well.
But so what is going on?
I'll tell you what's going on.
So there's four pillars of the economic hitman strategy.
I've been writing about this.
The Chinese innovation is getting into it.
All right.
So the first is fear.
Fear of another country, fear of whatever.
The second is debt.
The third is debt, like DEPT.
DEPTER LONSIDES.
Yep.
Money.
Fear, debt.
Fear, debt, anxiety over insufficiency.
We don't have enough.
We need to sell our oil to the other companies so we can have better education, so on and so forth.
And the third is divide and conquer.
And as time's gone on, these things have changed.
So during the early times, and those four pillars have been there for the last time.
Say these four again or no, there's fear, debt, anxiety over insufficiency, divide and conquer.
And those have been around for a couple of thousand years, that they've been used in one way or another.
And in the past, most of our history was mainly fear, and it was actual invasions or fear of invasion.
Fearmongering.
Yeah, like the old pirate thing, you know, the Jolly Roger going up.
But what we're really getting into these days is the last one, which is divide and conquer.
And right now in the United States, we're having this incredible experience of divide and conquer.
So the Republicans and the Democrats will never agree on things.
I mean, it's just like it's a very incredible tactic that's making America appear to the world as highly dysfunctional.
And that's what's happening.
On the other hand, let's call it the autocratic, whatever you want to call it, governments like China are looking very good to a lot of other countries in Latin America and Africa and so on because they can accomplish something.
And I think that's actually why Trump was so popular for one of the reasons because he seemed as though he was moving on a track where he would take command.
He would do that kind of stuff.
So I think what we're seeing here is that divide and conquer.
It's like Hillary's doing this, Trump's doing that, the Republicans are doing this, the Democrats are doing that.
It's a breakdown of a system.
Yeah, but there's a difference, John.
There's a difference.
Here's a difference.
And both of you guys are more on the same side than where I'm at with this because I'm very skeptical about what this is all about.
Here's the difference.
John, not a single outlet needed any information to go out there for three years talk about Trump was linked to Russia.
They needed no, nothing was confirmed for three and a half years.
They convinced America that that's what it was.
They had nothing.
There was no allegedly.
It was, it is, certainty.
It's happening.
He's with Russia.
He's Team Putin.
He's Putin's puppet.
Everybody said it with certainty.
And America believed.
No.
No.
You want me to go play the replay, the greatest hits?
You want me to bring you the greatest hits?
You don't think that's what was happening?
I don't think all of America agreed by any means.
Oh, yo, of course America didn't believe because America doesn't trust mainstream media.
Of course.
But what I'm saying to you is 99% of media, that's all they talked about.
That's right.
That's all they talk.
And they convinced the people, a lot of them, that this was a real thing going on.
Now, here's the thing.
Trump hadn't done any of this stuff.
Right.
Okay?
None of this stuff.
Okay.
Allegedly.
Yeah.
Yes, but you know, so it's a huge distraction.
So what are we really dealing with in the world today?
We're dealing with a very dire circumstance that I'm not.
You're digressing.
I'm right on point with Durham.
You're digressing.
You're going to a completely different place right now.
No, where I'm going to is the idea that the United States is locked in a battle with China.
Our economic hitman strategy, their economic hitman strategy.
Then Hillary's team China?
Is that what you're saying?
I'm saying all of this is distracting us from that.
That's not the point of that.
No, no, let's stay on.
That's my point.
I agree with you.
I agree with you that China's winning.
I don't disagree with you.
And what are we doing?
We're getting distracted by these things.
We're getting such a great place to go.
I don't agree with you.
I'm also getting distracted by the mask thing, the vaccination thing.
There's so many things that we're doing.
Well, that's like saying that we can't do two things at once.
And there's a lot of things that we're going to be doing at once.
The China thing, like for instance, the bigger distraction, I think, is Ukraine to China.
I think we should stop focusing on, I think Ukraine is a lot of smoke and mirrors.
You brought up that Putin is maybe allied with China.
I think that's a European thing.
The EU, NATO, they need to take over what's going on in Ukraine.
I don't think the United States needs to mess with it at all.
What I will say about this, and I very much was guilty of the Trump narrative, because for years and years and years, Trump, Trump, Putin, Puppet, everything, Pat.
But what they're saying here is actually a scandal of the highest proportion if it's true.
If this is true, this is way bigger than Watergate.
For years and years and years, they were basically shitting on Trump, saying that he was Putin's puppet.
And believe me, Trump did nothing to help that with his secret meetings and, you know, Russia, if you're listening, and all that.
He didn't do anything to help him.
But basically, if this turns out to be true, and right now it seems like they're throwing this guy, Michael Sussman, under the bus, don't be surprised if he turns into the next Jeffrey Epstein, wink, wink.
But if this is true, and Hillary did do this, and did plant, what's the use of the word, infiltrate Trump Tower, and did put that in there, and then she tweeted about it a couple days before the election.
If this turns out to be true, this is Watergate of the highest proportion.
And you know what?
As much as it pains for me to say this, Trump might have been right.
He might have been actually correct when he said that they were spying on his campaign.
Because one of the last interviews he did with 60 Minutes, what's the lady's name?
She's like, come on, President Trump.
You know that's not true.
He's like, no, it is.
Barbara Stahl, I believe, is her name.
I'm not a Trump fan.
And part of the reason I'm not a Trump fan is because I've been spoon-fed this misinformation about Trump, about Russia, much like most of America.
But if it turns out that Hillary actually did do this, she's got some explaining to do.
Yeah, so let me ask you.
And last point, it's not just me.
66% of Democrats, according to this poll, 66% of Democrats want Hillary investigated over Russia Gate.
So it's pretty interesting what's happening out there.
And last thing, if I put into YouTube, YouTube, because articles are a lot easier, especially with mainstream media to write, put it out there, boom, it's done.
You put it into YouTube, it's only Fox News that's covered this story.
So either Fox News is just doing what they do, riling up the base, or they're actually the only news outlet that is actually covering this.
Am I making sense here?
Yeah, but let me ask you about this.
So what is the significance of this in the long run?
What's the potential outcome?
I'm sorry, John.
What's the potential outcome?
Are you kidding me?
So let me ask you a question.
Let me ask you a question.
Do you think the billionaires who are illegally using crony capitalism methods to hurt people, should they be held accountable?
Wait, this is a diversion from the question.
I'm about to get to your answer, though.
Do you think they should be held accountable?
Because that bothers you a lot, what these billionaires are doing.
You're bothered with the three people that have 50% of wealth, which is what you're saying, more than the bottom 50% of the wealth, right?
That bothers you.
Yes.
Okay.
The same way that bothers you, this is the ultimate, ultimate manipulator, because you're saying who cares if somebody decides.
I did not say who cares.
I say, what is the logical outcome of this?
Of this?
If she is doing that, she needs to be held accountable and go to jail.
Truth, accountability, and what she did.
Because whoever did it, same thing if Trump did do it.
Yeah, you can't.
Truth, accountability, and penalty.
If he did collude with Russia, that's exactly what had been accountable to him.
True.
But the same thing should be for Clinton.
Right.
If this turns out to be her.
Totally agree.
Truth, accountability, and what's the penalty.
And we're on the same time.
Same thing with lobbyists, crony capitalism, taking payments, all that.
Yeah.
Accountability is the key.
That's the main thing.
Because totally.
You know how people say in transparency.
You know how people say stuff like, I don't trust.
My vote means nothing.
My vote means nothing.
If there's no accountability here, people are like, my vote means nothing.
No, I totally agree with you.
I mean, both of these, yeah.
That's why I asked.
So what is the final outcome of this?
Can we get at the truth?
And if we can get at the truth, will the system punish whoever's not?
I don't think it will.
That's the problem.
That's part of the problem.
I don't think it will.
That's part of the problem.
And as you said, as Adam says, if Trump's the problem, he should be held accountable.
If Hillary is the problem, she should be held accountable.
But will they be held accountable even if we do discover which one is?
Well, the reality is, and this is what Pat always says, that what, 12% controls America.
So, you know, there's 42% they're going to vote Republican regardless.
There's 44% they're going to vote Democrat regardless.
There's a couple percentage they're going to vote for Ralph Nader and the Green Party and Joe Jorgensen and the Libertarian, whatever.
But there's 10 to 12 percent usually in the Midwest, Rust Belt, they're going to see this and say, I don't know.
It turns out I was lied to.
And that's, you know, why I think that Republicans are going to steamroll in the midterms.
So we'll see.
But I think regardless, if they do stay, like, what's the outcome?
We're talking about outcomes here.
If the Republicans do basically trample Democrats in the midterms, which I think a lot of people expect them to do, I mean, that's just politics.
Yeah.
It almost always happens.
Exactly.
And now Republicans will control Congress.
We're going to be hearing a lot more about this.
Yeah.
So yeah, and the question is, how do we really get at the truth?
And, you know, it's not an easy one to answer these days.
And I'm not sure that it ever has been, but I think in a way it's tougher than ever.
You know, I think we're getting close to the end here.
So I want to raise a subject that I'd like to have you deal with at some point.
And that is that if there was a huge UFO hovering over us, aliens, getting ready to attack us, what would China, Russia, the United States, India, Brazil, what would we do?
This is the movie Independence Day, I believe, is what you're describing.
I don't know whether it's a, but what would we do?
Would we come together, do you think, to protect us?
Yeah.
Sure.
That's what they did in Independence Day.
Yeah, Will Smith.
I would like to say, that's an old movie, though, isn't it?
Yeah, but it's exactly what you're saying, is that if we had a common enemy.
Yeah.
Right.
So I would like to suggest right now that the way we human beings are looking at the world has alienated us from the world.
We are the aliens.
We've said that we are apart from, not a part of, nature.
We are supreme over.
It's human supremacy over nature.
And as a result, there's huge problems that are sweeping the planet today.
So my suggestion, what I'm writing, where I'm trying to go with this book, is that there's an economic hitman system that the United States has perpetuated, and now China's doing it, has learned from our mistakes and our successes, and they're outdoing us in it.
The hope, I think, for the world is that if we can all kind of define ourselves as the aliens, that we've got, and it's not humans.
It's our perception of what it means to be successful humans.
It's this idea that, yeah, you've got to throw one more pass, make one more touchdown, make one more billion.
There's so much that goes into this.
But what it's doing is it's threatening your newly born child's life.
What kind of a world can we expect?
We've got to work together.
So we can disagree.
I think the Chinese and the Russians and the Indians, we can disagree on so many things.
But let's agree that we're going to come together to fight the aliens.
I totally get it.
The problem here with that example is the alien is on the inside.
And when the alien's on the inside, you have a shit shill.
The calls coming from the within the house.
The problem is that we need to hold people accountable for us to have a little bit more trust in the fact that we can unify.
I think accountability leads to increase of trust.
By the way, as much as you and I banter every time we're together, you have no idea how much I look forward to the next time we're together.
And I'm being serious with you.
I enjoyed every single freaking time we talk.
Every time we do this, I enjoyed.
Are you in town or are you leaving today?
I'm leaving tomorrow.
You're leaving tomorrow?
Are you okay if I treat you to a really good restaurant tonight?
And you can go with whoever you're going to.
I got your bill.
Is that okay with you?
Sure.
Okay.
So afterwards, I'm going to tell you about where I want you to go.
You're going to enjoy yourself when you go there.
I want to say one thing, Pat, and I was thinking to some of your staff outside there.
I love the way you do things.
I love your show because I think you are one of the few people that really is trying to get at the truth.
And you come at it from sometimes an angle that I don't particularly like, but I like the fact that that's what you're doing.
And I admire that.
I appreciate that.
That means a lot coming from you, believe it or not.
I appreciate you.
I thank you for that compliment.
And we're trying to stay on your good side.
We don't need to stop on our bad side.
I will receive it.
So, guys, a couple things.
Number one, the latest book, Touching Jaguar.
Put the link below for them to go get it.
If you end up buying Touching Jaguar, don't do it without buying the new Confessions of Economic Hitman.
You have to read that book.
If you've not read it, I know it's an older book that did well many, many years ago.
You just got to know what this business model is.
So, order Touching Jaguar and order the new Confessions of Economic Hitman.
With that being said, John, thank you so much for coming out.
Folks, we're doing it again next Thursday.
This Thursday, I think this Thursday is Jason Miller, who was part of, he was part of Trump's camp, part of Trump's administration and the founder and CEO of Getter.
Of Getter, which is the one that Joe Rogan talked about, and one day they got 500,000 new followers.
Okay, for those of you guys that are following Valuteman, the direction that we're going, one of the new shows that we just launched today, which I'm very, very excited about, is called Perfiles.
Perfiles profiles, perfiles, we go to small business owners who are from Colombia, who are from Cuba, who are from Argentina, who are from many different places, Spanish specifically, and they're sharing their testimony of how they got here.
It's a very, I had my watch this with my dad.
Melva started crying.
She was watching one.
It's such an emotional episode if you watch this.
And we're releasing the first one today.
Small business.
These are not billionaires.
These are not millionaires.
These are small business owners that are trying to feed their families.
I want you to watch this 30-second preview.
We'll be launching to today on Valutamin Spanish.
Go ahead, Tyler.
You will find the first episode today being launched right now on Valuetainment Español.
Tyler, put the link to the channel where people can go find it as well.
And we'll be doing these regularly.
And if you know anybody that's a small business owner, Hispanic, South Florida, that would like to be considered for the next perfiles, send us a message at info at Valutamin.com.
We'd love to have a conversation with them and see if they can make it on the Perphilus program here.
John, thank you, folks.
We will see you guys on Thursday with Jason Miller.
