John Perkins, the author of the famous book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, provides an update of his observations found in his book and on various issues related to the economic crisis experienced in many countries of the world. For example, he was asked this question:
The degree of monopolization has reached an unprecedented level today. Oligarchy is established not just in Russia but throughout the rich capitalist countries. So is the industry of the EHMs growing and adapting to meet the new needs of global capital?However, I think his understanding of capitalism is rather limited as expressed in his answer to this question:
We are confronted daily with so many crises that are global in nature yet appear separate and unrelated. Isn’t the crisis now—including all its political, economic, environmental, and other aspects—a crisis of the global capitalist system itself as opposed to merely a financial crisis or a sum of multiple systemic crises?His problem with capitalism is limited to the recent development of capitalism which he identifies as "predatory capitalism":
I think it is a mutant viral form of capitalism that really took hold in the 1970s and has been spreading ever since. As expressed by famous economist Milton Friedman, it is based on a single premise, a single goal, and that goal is to maximize profits, without taking into account social and environmental cost.This has always been true of capitalism--that is the core nature of the beast. What is new about it is that it has gone global, it increasingly is directed by transnational elites ensconced in the major financial institutions and the Empire's military in the form of NATO. And, sovereign debts is increasingly being used, as he points out, to put entire nations under the control of the financial elites and to enable this class to strip entire nations of their assets.