This is probably my 'favourite' book in the archonological library. It must be. I've bought three versions of it: the original, the recent-ish update and the Audible version.
It was in fact listening to the audiobook on a recent road trip that provided the inspiration for the series return. New Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Perhaps the 'easiest' read of the series and potentially the one that can most move you along into a more sophisticated understanding of how power actually works today if you begin from a standing start. (Or even from behind. Which is to say if you still think the things you see flapping heads talk about on TV are correct.)
That said, it is also probably the most limitededededest of hangouts in the series, too. Charitably, we might say this is partially because because Perkins fears for his and his kids' lives if he were completely honest about his career. I've no doubt that's a part of it. But unlike, say, Copeland's Game of Nations, this book seems to intentionally minimise the scope of economic imperialism -avoiding the various CIA drug scams, getting 9/11 appallingly wrong, painting terrorists as simply desperate people rather than also controlled opposition and front groups which they are proven to be time and again, etc.
Essentially the book makes the corporations the bad guys, with the US government in particular playing second fiddle to all the crimes Perkins describes. This is disingenuous in his case and in the case of the pseudo-alternative, crypto-centrists of today's social media, is really just fucking dumb. In such situations, we quote the Borg Queen: "You imply a disparity where none exists." (Being explicit about government involvement tends to get you killed faster than saying corporations are sometimes nasty, of course.)
So, why I 'like' this book so much for the Archonology series is it is another senior insider, but one that paints the cleanest picture of how the debt component of Fitts' 'Central Banking and Warfare' model works. It is simple enough to be described in a cartoon:
Main Points in New Confessions of an Economic Hitman
- Commercially or politically interesting developing countries have consultants show up to sell them on a growth package of modernisation/electrification delivered by American companies, which will be funded by IMF loans. These consultants are EHMs. The growth they 'forecast' from these modernisation plans will be more than enough to pay off the loans taken to fund them in the first place.
- The promised growth numbers are a lie. Western companies get paid to electrify a country or build a freeway network, but the highspeed economic growth doesn’t arrive. The debt-ridden countries are then forced to sell off their assets to western companies.
- If a leader refuses the EHMs, then the jackals are moved in and the leader is assassinated and replaced.
- NSA and other intelligence agencies are an essential component of the EHM project. Perkins was NSA recruited before working in private consulting companies. (He doesn't explicitly say it, but there is a strange inference that he was almost 'recruited' as a child, too. Probably no surprise to readers of this blog.)
- This is an admittedly imperial model of running the world. The people involved are perfectly clear about what it is they are doing.
Secondary Points in the book
The sexual recruitment into the EHM programme is particularly interesting, given its clear origin in the spy games of old.
Very interesting to see in those last couple of chapters where it overlaps with Copeland's story of the Middle East -which is more honest- and Quigley's version of the international organisations funded by the AngloAmericans -which is better researched.
This book, however, gives you a clearer visual of how these tactics are deployed in practice. And the fact that everyone outside the US knows they do it, especially in LatAm:
Another note in Perkins's favour, this is the best explanation of the actual mechanics of how the petrodollar worked (maybe now more people will grokk why it's over). 
Ensnarement in the debt market is how Quigley’s Round Table groups got the whole world into a privately controlled economic system run by them and their friends -this, you will recall, was the goal of the 18th century European bankers. It was specifically to erode the political and financial sovereignty of nations/kings, etc. It is thus unsurprising to see the ‘Society of the Elect’ layer differently-described by Perkins in the formation of these supranational bodies.
Perkins himself would have qualified as a member of the ‘Association of Helpers’ back in his consulting economist days, being one of the people who facilitated these processes. It is these very people who facilitated building out the ‘Round Table Commonwealth’ -and got immensely rich doing so- are the layer that is being downsized.
If you are going to read this book -or if you have- I really do recommend gridding Perkins's 'confessions' to the Quigley's AngloAmerican power structure. Combined, they are a particularly illuminating glimpse into why so many people think politics is so dysfunctional today. It is actually functioning perfectly... according to this system.
The debt/growth no longer works and certainly no one trusts it. Obviously the best contemporary example of laundering western money into developing countries and back to western companies is that of the Haitian government; which is still trying to get back the aid money the Clintons were put in charge of, which they just gave to themselves and their industrialist friends who built factories there, instead.
It has been tremendously successful over the last forty years in tipping the entire world into the IMF/World Bank/BIS system. The next steps, the post-Bretton Woods steps, will be a step change in the elastic financial management of empire. Think of it like switching from the carrot to the stick.
We move, in the medium term, into the 'dollar diplomacy' described by Zeihan. It will no longer carry the false veneer of helping people. The race now becomes whether Eurasian countries can build their own standalone payment/investment/finance systems so that it can pursue an unmolested development programme before they get the jackal treatment (or worse).
And the latest national security policy wording -from both the Pentagon and the President- suggest they are in for a bumpy build.