The Art of the Steal

The economic hit man strategy has come home. John Perkins, bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, returns with an urgent sequel revealing how the strategy he once exposed abroad now shapes American politics at home. For decades, US presidents have used the four pillars of the economic hit man strategy, fear, debt, anxiety over insufficiency, and divide and conquer, to control other nations and enrich a growing oligarchy. In the groundbreaking Confessions of an Economic Hit Man trilogy, John Perkins exposed the complex, expansive, and clandestine global network that serves the interests of powerful corporate, financial, and political entities. In The Art of the Steal, he reveals its most dangerous evolution. Donald Trump represents a historic shift. He is the first US president to turn the economic hit man strategy into a personal brand and governing style. He has ascended the four pillars, brought the playbook home, and reversed the march toward the American ideal of liberty, equality, justice, democracy, opportunity, and an individualism that supports family and community. At the same time, he has forced what was hidden into the open. This book explains: how this happened, why it matters, and what each of us can do to turn things around. Both warning and blueprint, The Art of the Steal offers a pathway to renewing the American ideal and using it to model a new global ideal.