It's not just the young who understand what Brigette Depape's protest was about. There are members of my own generation who understand what has happened in the last thirty years. Some -- like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich -- keep trying to deliver the message. However, as academic economists, they are working at a disadvantage.
There is a significant part of the population who are skeptical of anyone from the academy who tries his or her hand at politics. John Perkins comes from a much different background. As a former employee of Charles T. Main of Boston, he has served as an enabler of the kind of economic policies which have been sacrosanct for the last thirty years. He has also documented the disasters which have followed in their wake.
In a recent interview with Amy Goodman, Perkins -- the author of Confessions of An Economic Hitman -- talks of the havoc he helped cause; and he worries about the future which his grandson will inherit. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, he has undergone his own conversion.
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