with prosperity and well-being.

“Only those smart enough to play by the rules,” he replied.

I grew up in a New Hampshire town named after a man who built his house on the tallest hill with money he saved selling shovels and blankets to California gold miners in 1849.

“Businessmen,” I began, “businessmen and bankers.

- Exactly. And today - large corporations. He leaned back in his chair. This country belongs to us. We got a lot more than permission to fly here without customs formalities.

- For example?

“You have a lot to learn, apparently. He raised his Martini, pointing at the city outside the window. “For starters, we control the military. We give them a salary and pay for all the equipment and weapons. And they protect us from the Indians, who absolutely do not need oil rigs on their land. In Latin America, whoever controls the army controls both the president and the courts. We can even write our own laws - we ourselves determine the fine for oil leakage, wages, that is, everything that concerns us.

Is Texaco paying for all this? Ann asked.

“Not really…” He leaned across the table toward her and stroked her arm. - You pay. Or your daddy. American taxpayer. The money comes in through the US Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the CIA, and the Pentagon, but here—he waved toward the city he could see through the window—“Texaco is in charge.” You remember that countries like this one have a rich history of coup d'état. If you dig well, it becomes clear that most often this happens when the leaders of the country refuse to play according to our rules.

Are you saying that Texaco is overthrowing governments? I asked.

He laughed.

- In a nutshell: governments that do not cooperate are considered Soviet puppets. They threaten American interests and democracy. And the CIA doesn't like it.

That evening began my training in what I later called the system of economic murder.

For several months, Ann and I lived in the rain forests of the Amazon. We were then transferred to the Andes, where I was assigned to help a brickmakers' cooperative improve the productivity of their outdated kilns. Ann trained people with physical and other disabilities so they could find work in local businesses.

Ecuador had extremely low social mobility. A few wealthy families, the ricos, owned literally everything, including local business and politics. Their agents bought the bricks from the manufacturers at the lowest price and then sold them for ten times the price. One of the brick manufacturers complained to the mayor. A few days later, he was hit and killed by a car.

The local community was horrified. People convinced me that he was killed. My suspicions were reinforced when the chief of police announced that the deceased was involved in a Cuban plot to establish communist power in Ecuador (Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia as a result of a CIA operation almost three years ago). He hinted that any brickmaker who violated the established order would be arrested as a rebel.

The bricklayers begged me to go to the rich and settle everything. They were willing to do anything to appease those they feared, trusting that the rich would protect them if they surrendered.

I didn't know what to do. Having no influence on the mayor, I decided that the intervention of a 25-year-old foreigner would only make matters worse. So I just listened to these people and sympathized with them.

Over time, I realized that the rich were part of a system that had intimidated the Andean peoples since the time of the Spanish conquerors. I understood that my silent sympathy harmed the locals. They had to learn to deal with their fears; they had to give free rein to the anger they had suppressed for so many years; they had to realize the injustice from which they suffered; they should have stopped waiting for help from me. They had to resist the rich.

One evening I turned to the locals, saying that it was time for them to act. It is necessary to do everything possible - even to risk life - to ensure prosperity and peace for your children.

Knowing that I can inspire these people was an important lesson for me. I realized that the people themselves have become unwitting accomplices in this conspiracy, and the only way out of the situation is to convince them to act. And it worked.

Brick manufacturers organized a cooperative. Each family provided a certain number of bricks, the income from which the cooperative used to rent a truck and a warehouse in the city. The rich boycotted the cooperative until a Lutheran mission in Norway made an agreement with the cooperative to build a school, paying about five times what the rich paid for the bricks, but half as much as if they had bought them from the rich. The cooperative flourished.

About a year later, Ann and I completed our work in the Peace Corps. I was 26 years old and out of draft age. I became an economic killer.

When I first joined their ranks, I convinced myself that I was doing the right thing. South Vietnam has fallen under the influence of the communist North, and now the Soviet Union and China have become a threat to the whole world. I was taught in business school that funding infrastructure projects through gigantic loans from the World Bank would lift developing countries out of poverty and free them from the clutches of communism. Experts from the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development reinforced my conviction in this.

By the time the whole falsity of these fables became clear to me, I was firmly stuck in the system. I went to boarding school in New Hampshire and didn't have a lot of money, and now I'm making a lot of money, traveling first class to the countries I've dreamed of all my life, staying in the best hotels, eating at fancy restaurants, and meeting heads of state. And I did all this on my own. It never crossed my mind to quit.

And then the nightmares began.

I woke up at night in the rooms of luxurious hotels, tormented by images of real pictures I saw: legless leprosy patients, tied to wooden boxes on wheels, rolled through the streets of Jakarta; men and women bathing in the yellow-green waters of the canal, where others at the same time relieved themselves; a human corpse in a garbage heap, infested with worms and flies; and children sleeping in cardboard boxes and fighting packs of stray dogs for leftovers. I realized that I was emotionally detached from all this. Like other Americans, I didn't even consider these creatures to be human; they were "beggars", "losers" - "others".

One day, my limousine provided by the Indonesian government stopped at a traffic light. The leper patient held out his bloodied stumps to me through the window. My driver yelled at him. He grinned wryly, baring his toothless mouth, and walked away. The car started moving, but his spirit seemed to remain with me. He seemed to be looking for me; his bloody stump was a warning, his smile a message. "Fix it," he seemed to be saying. - "Repent."

I began to take a closer look at the world around me. And on yourself. I realized that my life is bleak despite all the trappings of success. I took Valium every night and drank too much. I woke up in the morning, drugged up with coffee and pills, and dragged myself to negotiations where I signed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts.

This life seemed completely normal to me. I believed in what I did. I got into debt so as not to give up the usual comfort. I was driven by fear—fear of Communism, of losing my job, of failing, and of being deprived of all the material things I was told I needed.

One night I was awakened by a nightmare of a different kind.

I entered the office of the head of the country, where a large oil field had just been discovered.

“Our construction companies,” I began, “are planning to rent equipment from your brother's John Deere franchise. We will pay twice the current prices; your brother can share the profits with you.

In the dream, I went on to explain that we were going to make similar agreements with his friends who owned the Coca-Cola bottling plant and with other food and drink suppliers, as well as with a contracting organization that would hire workers. All he has to do is take out a loan from the World Bank, which will allow him to hire American corporations to implement infrastructure projects in his country.

Then I casually noted that in case of refusal, the jackals would take care of them.

“Remember,” I said, “what happened to—” “I read out a list of names such as Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in the Congo, Diem in Vietnam.”

“All of them,” I continued, “ были свергнуты или… — я провел пальцем по шее, — потому что отказались играть according to our rules.

I lay in a cold sweat on the bed and realized with horror that this nightmare reflected my reality. That is exactly what I was doing.

It was not difficult for me to convince government officials, as if from my dream, with impressive data that they could use to justify a loan to their people. My staff of economists, financial experts, statisticians, and mathematicians masterfully crafted falsified econometric models to prove that such investments—in energy systems, highways, ports, airports, and industrial estates—would generate economic growth.

For many years I