Bush appoints James Gandolfini to cabinet

This from Democracy Now's new year's eve programming:

We spend the hour with John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies.

From Powell's publisher comments:

In his controversial book, John Perkins tells the gripping tale of the years he spent working for an international consulting firm where his job was to convince underdeveloped countries to accept enormous loans, much bigger than they really needed, for infrastructure development — and to make sure that the development projects were contracted to U. S. multinationals. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the American government and the international aid agencies allied with it were able, by dictating repayment terms, to essentially control their economies. It was not unlike the way a loan shark operates — and Perkins and his colleagues didn't shun this kind of unsavory association. They referred to themselves as "economic hit men."

Has anyone here seen the movie Burn! starring Brando? I highly recommend it. While we're on the subject of unscrupulous practices of empire.